The Story of My Life, Part 2

Last time out, I was a little vague regarding where I was, and what I was doing, during my childhood; today I figure I'll be a little more specific.

I spent all of my early childhood in a med/small town in West Virginia called Nitro. Nitro was pretty cool... played itself up as a "living memorial to World War I" because, well, they made the chemical weapons there, and there was a cannon sitting off of 21st Street that could have possibly been from sometime around when World War I was happening. Hooray for war atrocities and old, rusty hardware!

On the other hand, I still maintain, after all this time, that the very best tap water I've ever had came out of the water fountain at the fire station next to the old elementary school. Tap water will never taste any better than that, and that particular fountain was colder than any fountain I've ever used. It also didn't hurt that it was someplace I could stop at any point during my hyperactive summer wandering and get rehydrated.

My first 14 years were in Nitro; I wish I remembered more about it. Certain details definitely stick in my mind, though, even after all this time... of course, I'll list them in a big text block:

... walking the train tracks looking for loose spikes; endlessly traipsing around the woods with John Parker when we were in the 2nd grade, getting my catholic school uniform dirty on purpose because uniforms suck; endlessly traipsing around the woods for my entire childhood with a succession of different friends and getting them (and even me, sometimes) into trouble; losing one of my shoes two feet down in a mudhole in the middle of the woods five miles away from home, and having to take Dad back out there the next day to dig it up; hearing "Get Into The Groove" and "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" a million times at the city pool; a dentist appointment on the day of school pictures one year, consequently being disappointed that I had to get my picture taken again, instead of just enjoying the one where half my face was paralyzed (coolest school picture EVER); Me: "Holy shit Batman!" Rick: "Shut the fuck up, Robin"; At one point, I was supposed to write a very, very long sentence that the teacher actually had the entire class vote on, a thousand times, just because I had thought it would be funny to take letter stickers and spell out "Mrs Spencer will die" on the outside of my Trapper Keeper. I guess if a kid did that these days, they just take him out back and shoot him in the head, gangland style?; sixth grade was fun, spent a day in jail for a social studies project (along with the rest of the class), got in trouble at one point for having condoms in school and showing them to other kids (sixth grade was a lot younger back then), got in trouble for never doing my homework, got in trouble for, well, just about everything I did that was school related; Nicole Crewdson... I'll never forget Nicole, she was my biggest unrequited crush ever. Fifth, sixth, seventh grade, I'd walk home, and her house was on the same route as mine, sometimes I'd see her out there, sometimes we'd actually talk, if I could bring myself to. I wrote her name in huge letters all over my bedroom wall. I got so pissed off when my foster brother was dating her when we were 13, it literally took me years to get over that; the creek... that nasty sewer creek that wound around the entire town was MY DOMAIN. NOBODY knew the creek better than I did, I followed every branch in both directions until it disappeared, from Ridenour Park to Cross Lanes to the Kanawha River... no, wait, not just "from" Ridenour, I actually followed it upstream past Ridenour. I knew every square inch of all the woods surrounding it, and I found all the deepest spots to swim in and probably inoculate myself for life against a lot of the more virulent diseases out there; the Devil's Teatable, and I knew the person that spray-painted the big rock... I think that place may have been bulldozer'd and developed by now. But I could get to the Teatable from something like four different directions... Rick Carr and I had paths there that only we knew about, unless we invited another kid along...

... fuckin hell, I remembered more than I thought. Next up, I'll talk about my early BMX roots; maybe I'll make it to the point where I moved out of Nitro, but don't bet on it.

I mean, shit, it's not like I'm trying to be linear here.