There used to be a story here, about a girl I loved more than any other. At her behest, I have removed the story. Generally, I don't like being censored when it comes to things I've written, but in this case it wasn't just that she didn't want the story up (for personal reasons). It was that recently many things came to light that made much of the story inaccurate. So I am sorry. That story is no longer being written. But it is New Year's Eve as I write this, and I want to reiterate and add to something I said in an earlier post: Life is short. Don't spend a lot of time dwelling on one thing. I did that, and it ended terribly. Instead, live your life to the fullest. Do what you love, even if it means you have to make a few sacrifices. In the end, the only thing you have to worry about is yourself. Friends, love, everything; it can all be gone in an instant. Do what makes you happy, not what makes others happy or what makes "sense." Do what's right for you, and everything else will fall into place.
This is your story. Go out and write it.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
The best games are created out of boredom and ridiculous circumstances. This story is about the creation of the most fun, yet oddest, game I’ve ever been a part of: Cockball.
To tell this story, I have to back up to my senior year of high school. My best friend at the time, Kent, and I used to spend almost every night driving around listening to rap music that could literally be heard a mile away (I knew he was coming about two minutes before he actually pulled into my driveway).
Kent loved African American culture (I assume he still does) and would constantly say even though he was white everywhere else; he had a big black dick. It was funny mostly because he was the whitest person I knew. A fact I would constantly point out whenever he mentioned it.
For his 18th birthday, I decided it would be hilarious to give him exactly what he already claimed he had: A big black penis. A 10 inch black dildo, to be exact. On his birthday, when he came over to pick me up and hang out, I told him I had a present for him. He took one look in the little plastic bag and started laughing. I explained my reason for buying it for him, which made him laugh harder.
We drove around for a few hours, going to the nearby towns and talking to various people we knew in the area. When he dropped me off (somewhere around 11 or so, I don’t remember the exact time), I walked into my room and realized he left his present behind. I called him and he told me he would get it later (spoiler alert: he never did).
A few months later, I moved to Cedar Rapids to go to Kirkwood Community College. Kent and I still hung out quite a bit, but not as much, with me having class all the time and him working every day. Eventually we grew apart, as friends who grow up usually do. I still talk to him every once in a while, but I haven’t actually seen him in years. Sad, I know.
That first year of college, I still made trips back home to play with my band at the school and visit family and old friends still in high school. One night, after band practice, my friends/band mates Robert and Sam wanted to hang out. Even in college, it was hard to avoid the things you did in high school, so we decided to drive around while listening to CDs. We stopped at my dad’s house for about an hour to find some new CDs to listen to.
While rummaging around in my room, Robert found the dildo (still in the package, in case you were wondering). I told them my reason for buying it and they found it hilarious. I told Robert to put it back where he found it because we were leaving. We went out to my car and as soon as we got in, Robert pulls out his pocket knife and the dildo and opens the package.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“I’ve never seen one before, I want to know what it’s like.”
I shook my head and drove away. When we got to Belle Plaine, Robert rolled his window down and started waving the dildo out at people as we passed them. This went on for about an hour before I decided to leave town before we got in trouble. I took Robert and Sam home, the dildo being put in the glove compartment before Robert got out. I didn’t realize he had put it in there until days later when I returned to Cedar Rapids. Once I found it, I muttered a “God damn it” and closed the glove box.
After that, whenever I would have someone in my car, I would tell them about my glove box treasure. Absolutely everyone thought it was hilarious and pulled it out and waved it at the Cedar Rapids traffic. I’m surprised to this day I never got in trouble for people doing that.
Before class one day, I was telling one of my classmates about my band and how we didn’t have a name yet.
“You should name your band ‘Steve.’”
“But no one in the band’s name is Steve.”
“That’s why it would be funny!”
While I didn’t like that name for a band, I did think it worked for the dildo. Therefore, its new name was Steve.
By my second year of college, the band had broken up and I was no longer going home on the weekends. I had college friends, now, and they took up all my time. Kent and I stopped hanging out almost completely and Robert and Sam would come up to visit once in a while, but otherwise we didn’t see each other.
That fall, I was in the school musical, “Urinetown.” I met many new people, notably Stan, Jack, Jesse, Woody, and Topher. During tech week, Woody, who was playing the villainous lead, started flubbing his lines, which he had perfect only the day before. The music director blamed it on his pants: a pair of jeans with flared legs that Woody had done himself by adding a plaid patch to them. Very unique. He was told to never wear them again, so as a memento, he nailed them to his apartment wall.
A few weeks after this, Topher (who was Woody’s roommate) and I thought it would be funny to take Steve inside and take a picture of him inside the zipper of the pants. After that, simply because I was tired of having the damn thing in my glove compartment, Steve stayed on the wall with the pants.
One night, Woody, Topher, Stan, Jack, Jesse, and I were hanging out at Woody and Topher’s apartment after class. Steve had become quite popular with our friends, because, let’s face it, a bunch of young college guys with a dildo devolve into children. Jack, as a joke, took Steve off the wall and told Jesse to toss a Nerf ball that was sitting on the floor. He hit the ball across the room, and realized that the ball traveled pretty well across the room.
Now, I had gone into the other room to look something up on Topher’s computer.
“Woody, bend over, I’m going to hit it into your gooch.” I heard Jack say.
What the hell? I got up and went out to the living room to see Jack trying to hit the ball into Woody’s ass. After a few minutes of laughing about this, we started playing indoor baseball with Steve as the bat. When we figured out that we couldn’t actually run bases in the apartment, we invoked ghost runners.
Thus, Cockball was invented.
Throughout the two years we played, we made the rules up as we discovered the need for them. For instance, if you hit the back wall without touching a person or the ceiling, it was a home run. If it hit the air conditioner, it was a triple. If it went behind the couch, it was a double. Everything else was a single. For the first few games, as a joke, we had Woody bend over in the outfield and called it the “7th inning Gooch,” where, if you hit him in the ass, it was an automatic grand slam (even if there was no one on base). I don’t recall anyone ever doing it.
We thought about patenting it as a college game, and wrote out the rules and everything, but realized that apparently ”Cockball” was already a different game (a stupider one at that. Look it up if you don’t know it). That and we really had no idea how that kind of stuff worked.
We bought a white board and a permanent marker and drew out a score board, which still hangs on my refrigerator. Steve resides with Jesse as a souvenir. And we all have the memory of this wonderful game.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Walking in a Winter Wonderland
I love the winter. It always gives me good feelings inside. There are so many good things that go on in the winter: Christmas, New Year, Valentine's Day, sledding, hot chocolate, etc. I love all of them. This is one of my best memories of Winter.
When I was at Kirkwood, I spent a lot of time at Topher's apartment. His roommate, Woody, and I were pretty good friends as well, because we were both in theatre and had just been in "Urinetown" together. Yes, friends, that is the name of an ACTUAL show. A musical, in fact. Anyway, the first winter we knew each other, we were sitting around the apartment, bored, trying to find something to do. So Woody mentioned sledding. Topher and I thought that sounded fun, so we drove to Wal-Mart in search of a sled.
While there, I thought it'd be fun to get a big tupperware storage container and slide down the hill in that. So I spent the $20 and bought it. Woody bought a sled that looked more like a boogie board you would use in a pool than an actual sled. Topher bought a normal, circular sled. After Wal-Mart, we went over to my grandma's house, where I lived, and grabbed my video camera, because what's funnier than a bunch of grown people sledding like 8 year olds?
We went back to Topher and Woody's apartment and got ready to go sledding. Behind Linn Hall at Kirkwood was a really tall hill that we thought looked like a lot of fun. So we drove over there and trekked up to the top of the hill.
We went down the hill on Topher's sled a few times, and it was fun, but nothing spectacular. We tried Woody's sled, and it barely went half way down the hill. Slowly. We tried my storage container... And didn't move at all. The night was turning out to not be as fun as we thought. I started filming Topher and Woody when I got tired of walking back up the hill all the time. It was dark, so the footage kinda sucked, but you could still make out what we were doing.
Then, I got a brilliant idea.
"Hey, we should put the storage box on top of the boogie board."
Woody and Topher didn't think it would work, but nothing else was working that well, so we gave it a shot. We set the boogie board/sled on the snow and set the box on top of it. Topher and I held it steady as Woody got inside the box. Woody started shuffling the box forward a little, the boogie board oddly staying underneath it. He started off slowly at first, so we started thinking it wasn't going to work at all.
WHOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!!
Woody suddenly took off. He yelled in excitement as he went down the hill. As he reached the bottom, he wasn't slowing down. Topher and I watched as Woody tipped the box over and the boogie board kept going... and slammed into a dumpster at the bottom of the hill. He quickly got up, grabbed the box and the boogie board, and ran back up the hill.
"It was awesome! I had to bail at the end, because I was going to hit the dumpster, but it was great! You need to go."
So we set everything back up, a few feet to the right so he wouldn't have to worry about hitting the dumpster, and Topher climbed inside the box.
WHOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!!
Topher went down the hill just as quickly as Woody. He went a few feet into the parking lot before he bailed. He grabbed everything and ran up the hill.
"Dude, that was cool! It's so fast, I probably would have kept going if I wouldn't have bailed to stop."
At that moment, our friend, Carl, called me and asked what we were up to. We told him, and he rushed over. He, too, tried our set up and found himself having fun. I filmed every bit of it, until I ran out of battery. The only problem is that I eventually taped over part of it. Which kinda sucks.
After a few hours of this, we all went back to Topher and Woody's apartment and had hot chocolate to warm up. We all gushed about our fun new activity, and tried to think of a name. As the one who came with the idea itself, I'm proud to say I also came up with the name:
Thus, the Boogie Box was born.
When I was at Kirkwood, I spent a lot of time at Topher's apartment. His roommate, Woody, and I were pretty good friends as well, because we were both in theatre and had just been in "Urinetown" together. Yes, friends, that is the name of an ACTUAL show. A musical, in fact. Anyway, the first winter we knew each other, we were sitting around the apartment, bored, trying to find something to do. So Woody mentioned sledding. Topher and I thought that sounded fun, so we drove to Wal-Mart in search of a sled.
While there, I thought it'd be fun to get a big tupperware storage container and slide down the hill in that. So I spent the $20 and bought it. Woody bought a sled that looked more like a boogie board you would use in a pool than an actual sled. Topher bought a normal, circular sled. After Wal-Mart, we went over to my grandma's house, where I lived, and grabbed my video camera, because what's funnier than a bunch of grown people sledding like 8 year olds?
We went back to Topher and Woody's apartment and got ready to go sledding. Behind Linn Hall at Kirkwood was a really tall hill that we thought looked like a lot of fun. So we drove over there and trekked up to the top of the hill.
We went down the hill on Topher's sled a few times, and it was fun, but nothing spectacular. We tried Woody's sled, and it barely went half way down the hill. Slowly. We tried my storage container... And didn't move at all. The night was turning out to not be as fun as we thought. I started filming Topher and Woody when I got tired of walking back up the hill all the time. It was dark, so the footage kinda sucked, but you could still make out what we were doing.
Then, I got a brilliant idea.
"Hey, we should put the storage box on top of the boogie board."
Woody and Topher didn't think it would work, but nothing else was working that well, so we gave it a shot. We set the boogie board/sled on the snow and set the box on top of it. Topher and I held it steady as Woody got inside the box. Woody started shuffling the box forward a little, the boogie board oddly staying underneath it. He started off slowly at first, so we started thinking it wasn't going to work at all.
WHOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!!
Woody suddenly took off. He yelled in excitement as he went down the hill. As he reached the bottom, he wasn't slowing down. Topher and I watched as Woody tipped the box over and the boogie board kept going... and slammed into a dumpster at the bottom of the hill. He quickly got up, grabbed the box and the boogie board, and ran back up the hill.
"It was awesome! I had to bail at the end, because I was going to hit the dumpster, but it was great! You need to go."
So we set everything back up, a few feet to the right so he wouldn't have to worry about hitting the dumpster, and Topher climbed inside the box.
WHOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!!
Topher went down the hill just as quickly as Woody. He went a few feet into the parking lot before he bailed. He grabbed everything and ran up the hill.
"Dude, that was cool! It's so fast, I probably would have kept going if I wouldn't have bailed to stop."
At that moment, our friend, Carl, called me and asked what we were up to. We told him, and he rushed over. He, too, tried our set up and found himself having fun. I filmed every bit of it, until I ran out of battery. The only problem is that I eventually taped over part of it. Which kinda sucks.
After a few hours of this, we all went back to Topher and Woody's apartment and had hot chocolate to warm up. We all gushed about our fun new activity, and tried to think of a name. As the one who came with the idea itself, I'm proud to say I also came up with the name:
Thus, the Boogie Box was born.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Cheeseburgers in Paradise
My current project is a somewhat expensive one.
There is an episode of How I Met Your Mother where Marshall talks about how he found "the best burger in New York City." He went into great detail about the burger and the place itself, but could not remember how he got there. So the gang spends the whole episode going from burger joint to burger joint in search of this awesome burger. Every time they think they found it, Marshall says "this isn't it" and off they go to find the next place that might have this magical burger. Finally, in the end, they find the burger place and everything is right with the world.
I decided I wanted that experience.
I have taken it upon myself to find what I deem the "best burger in Iowa City." Indeed, I have had many burgers throughout my life, but very few that elicited as great a reaction as Marshall's. So I have taken it upon myself to go to each restaurant/pub in Iowa City and Coralville (because let's face it, they're pretty much the same town at this point) that serves burgers and try them, one by one, in search of the best.
Many of you readers are personal friends of mine. Okay, you're ALL personal friends of mine. I invite you all, anyone who wishes, to come with me on this journey. If you want to join me, please, give me a call. Send me a text. Write on my facebook wall. We WILL work together to find the best burger in Iowa City. Thank you, my friends. And wish me luck. I hope to see some of you enjoying a burger with me.
-Joel W. Collins
There is an episode of How I Met Your Mother where Marshall talks about how he found "the best burger in New York City." He went into great detail about the burger and the place itself, but could not remember how he got there. So the gang spends the whole episode going from burger joint to burger joint in search of this awesome burger. Every time they think they found it, Marshall says "this isn't it" and off they go to find the next place that might have this magical burger. Finally, in the end, they find the burger place and everything is right with the world.
I decided I wanted that experience.
I have taken it upon myself to find what I deem the "best burger in Iowa City." Indeed, I have had many burgers throughout my life, but very few that elicited as great a reaction as Marshall's. So I have taken it upon myself to go to each restaurant/pub in Iowa City and Coralville (because let's face it, they're pretty much the same town at this point) that serves burgers and try them, one by one, in search of the best.
Many of you readers are personal friends of mine. Okay, you're ALL personal friends of mine. I invite you all, anyone who wishes, to come with me on this journey. If you want to join me, please, give me a call. Send me a text. Write on my facebook wall. We WILL work together to find the best burger in Iowa City. Thank you, my friends. And wish me luck. I hope to see some of you enjoying a burger with me.
-Joel W. Collins
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Grief
So I was cleaning my room today, and I found a short monologue I wrote for Playwriting class. Oddly enough, it rang very true to recent events in my life, even though I wrote it 2 years ago. Maybe it's fate that I found this, but I wanted to share it with you, dear readers, because I actually felt a little better after reading it. Who knew that 2 years ago I would ACTUALLY be writing the future. Anyway, enjoy the monologue:
(Open: A lone man, around 28 years old, sits on the floor center stage. His head is in his hands. He looks up and slowly drops his hands to his sides.)
Grady: How could this happen? I thought I did everything right. I was always there when no one else was. Wasn't I? I was never late for anything you asked me to be there for. But when were you ever there for me? Never. Not once. Because of you, until today, I haven't left my bed in four days. I did nothing but watch "Scrubs" reruns on several different channels. The one where Dr. Cox kills three patients was on at least three times during that time. And I cried EVERY time! I didn't answer my phone, I didn't answer the door, I laid there. I didn't sleep at all. I barely ate anything that entire time. I'm STARVING!! I'm starving for your attention... But you never give it to me. And I'm tired. Physically and mentally exhausted. (Grady stands up) I just wanted to be your friend; MORE than a friend. And you led me on, making me think that's what you wanted, too. But it's not, is it? What do you want? I've given everything I can. I don't want this to end, but I don't want to go on with all this pain. I should have listened to everyone else who said to leave you alone. Stop hanging out so much, they said. I thought they were just jealous, so I ignored them. And now I see they were right. I should have listened... But I didn't. And here we are. And here come the tears. (Grady begins crying) I don't know anymore... I guess I never did. I can't stop crying. I don't want to. If I did, that would mean I've finally given up on you. And that's just not who I am. Just... tell me what to do to change everything. Tell me what I have to do to make things better. Is there anything I can do? No... I didn't think so. It's what YOU should be doing. I shouldn't have to do SHIT! I didn't do anything wrong. YOU did! Why am I the only one hurting? You should be, too! But no, you don't care. You never cared. If you really cared, you wouldn't have done this in the first place. Fuck you. I'm done. I don't care anymore. I don't. Have fun with your life. I'll have fun with mine... FUCK!!!
(Grady sits down on the floor and covers his face with his hands)
Grady: How could this happen...
(Open: A lone man, around 28 years old, sits on the floor center stage. His head is in his hands. He looks up and slowly drops his hands to his sides.)
Grady: How could this happen? I thought I did everything right. I was always there when no one else was. Wasn't I? I was never late for anything you asked me to be there for. But when were you ever there for me? Never. Not once. Because of you, until today, I haven't left my bed in four days. I did nothing but watch "Scrubs" reruns on several different channels. The one where Dr. Cox kills three patients was on at least three times during that time. And I cried EVERY time! I didn't answer my phone, I didn't answer the door, I laid there. I didn't sleep at all. I barely ate anything that entire time. I'm STARVING!! I'm starving for your attention... But you never give it to me. And I'm tired. Physically and mentally exhausted. (Grady stands up) I just wanted to be your friend; MORE than a friend. And you led me on, making me think that's what you wanted, too. But it's not, is it? What do you want? I've given everything I can. I don't want this to end, but I don't want to go on with all this pain. I should have listened to everyone else who said to leave you alone. Stop hanging out so much, they said. I thought they were just jealous, so I ignored them. And now I see they were right. I should have listened... But I didn't. And here we are. And here come the tears. (Grady begins crying) I don't know anymore... I guess I never did. I can't stop crying. I don't want to. If I did, that would mean I've finally given up on you. And that's just not who I am. Just... tell me what to do to change everything. Tell me what I have to do to make things better. Is there anything I can do? No... I didn't think so. It's what YOU should be doing. I shouldn't have to do SHIT! I didn't do anything wrong. YOU did! Why am I the only one hurting? You should be, too! But no, you don't care. You never cared. If you really cared, you wouldn't have done this in the first place. Fuck you. I'm done. I don't care anymore. I don't. Have fun with your life. I'll have fun with mine... FUCK!!!
(Grady sits down on the floor and covers his face with his hands)
Grady: How could this happen...
Friday, July 2, 2010
Ghostbusters
Many people don't know this about me, but I am obsessed with the occult. I believe in ghosts, demons, magick, cryptozoology, and all that weird jazz. One of my favorite things to do when I was younger was go with a group of friends to a supposedly haunted place (usually a cemetery) and ghost hunt. While not every trip yielded results, some were pretty freaky (even if it was just in our heads). These are the ones I remember.
Before I start, I must give credit where credit is due: My mom is the one who first got me to notice the supernatural things around me. She told me stories about the house we lived in (and she still does), which I was too young to notice myself. One thing she told me about was when she was feeding the dog one day. She looked at the double windows that showed into the kitchen and there was an old lady standing next to me, staring at my mom. Apparently, I hadn't noticed the lady and happily ate whatever food I was eating.
I, however, had different experiences in that house. None of which were violent, by any means, but freaky to a young boy. I slept most of my youth with my closet light on because my closet door had windows that showed into the hallway. When the light was off... I watched shadows walk like people up and down the hallway. This led to a lot of sleepless nights... until I started sleeping at the foot of my bed where I couldn't see into the closet.
My first ghost hunting trip was when I was 14. My buddy Antoine's family were also interested in the supernatural, and they were the ones who officially introduced me to the occult. They let me join in on a Ouija session, told me stories of their own, and even took me ghost hunting for the first time. Antoine's mom was a wiccan, as well, which was interesting. Nothing happened on my first trip out, so it was kinda disappointing... but fun!
It wasn't until I was 16 that I had my first odd encounter. I went with Antoine and his family to a cemetery in Ladora. We stalked around the cemetery (which they said a witch's coven had all been buried there) for about an hour before deciding to call it quits. On the way out, I felt a weird sensation at the nape of my neck, so I turned around. And there it was, a transparent... well, it looked like someone on their stomach... crawling across the ground behind me. I told everyone about it, but when we started looking, whatever it was had disappeared into thin air.
When I was 17, Kent and I started traveling around and visiting different cemeteries around the area. Now, Kent also has his own stories of the supernatural, involving the ghost of a soldier that would come visit him at his mom's house. Well, he'll probably kill me for revealing this (I think I was supposed to keep it a secret), but he is a little psychic. Not foretell the future or read your mind psychic, but he can sense things other people can't. In this particular instance, Kent, my cousin Mark, and I went to 13 stairs outside of Palo... or at least attempted to. See, kids, it's TECHNICALLY illegal to be in a cemetery after dark. Sure, you can get permits (that's what shows like Ghost Hunters and its ilk do), but who has time and money to do things like that? Anyway, we got to 13 stairs and there was a sheriff there reprimanding some other kids, so we turned around and headed back toward Cedar Rapids.
Suddenly, it got VERY cold in the car. For those of you who are unaware, when a ghost is near you, the air gets colder. The weird part about this is that the heat was on in the car. On full blast. Suddenly Kent, in the passenger seat, spoke up:
"There's something in the car."
I looked in the rear view mirror as the windows in the back started fogging up. Matt started fidgeting.
"What's wrong?" I asked
"Something's scratching my back."
"It's not here to hurt us. It's trying protect us..." Kent said.
"From what?"
"From that cemetery..."
After a few miles, Kent announced that the spirit had left the car. So in silence, we drove to Cedar Rapids, then back home to Victor. When we got back to my dad's house, Matt took off his shirt and started to walk away from us, into the brightly lit kitchen.
His back was covered in scratch marks.
We took pictures (I'm not sure what happened to them) and when we got them developed, there was a glowing orb in the picture next to Matt. Kent and I were clean, but Matt had a glowing orb. In every picture. It was... odd... to say the least.
Anyway, I have lots of stories about ghost hunting with friends, but being that ghost stories are more of a Halloween thing, I think I will save some of them for then. And anyone who wants to have their own ghost story to tell, I'm up for it any time. Just give me a call. I know some neat places, and if nothing else, at least it's a story to tell.
Before I start, I must give credit where credit is due: My mom is the one who first got me to notice the supernatural things around me. She told me stories about the house we lived in (and she still does), which I was too young to notice myself. One thing she told me about was when she was feeding the dog one day. She looked at the double windows that showed into the kitchen and there was an old lady standing next to me, staring at my mom. Apparently, I hadn't noticed the lady and happily ate whatever food I was eating.
I, however, had different experiences in that house. None of which were violent, by any means, but freaky to a young boy. I slept most of my youth with my closet light on because my closet door had windows that showed into the hallway. When the light was off... I watched shadows walk like people up and down the hallway. This led to a lot of sleepless nights... until I started sleeping at the foot of my bed where I couldn't see into the closet.
My first ghost hunting trip was when I was 14. My buddy Antoine's family were also interested in the supernatural, and they were the ones who officially introduced me to the occult. They let me join in on a Ouija session, told me stories of their own, and even took me ghost hunting for the first time. Antoine's mom was a wiccan, as well, which was interesting. Nothing happened on my first trip out, so it was kinda disappointing... but fun!
It wasn't until I was 16 that I had my first odd encounter. I went with Antoine and his family to a cemetery in Ladora. We stalked around the cemetery (which they said a witch's coven had all been buried there) for about an hour before deciding to call it quits. On the way out, I felt a weird sensation at the nape of my neck, so I turned around. And there it was, a transparent... well, it looked like someone on their stomach... crawling across the ground behind me. I told everyone about it, but when we started looking, whatever it was had disappeared into thin air.
When I was 17, Kent and I started traveling around and visiting different cemeteries around the area. Now, Kent also has his own stories of the supernatural, involving the ghost of a soldier that would come visit him at his mom's house. Well, he'll probably kill me for revealing this (I think I was supposed to keep it a secret), but he is a little psychic. Not foretell the future or read your mind psychic, but he can sense things other people can't. In this particular instance, Kent, my cousin Mark, and I went to 13 stairs outside of Palo... or at least attempted to. See, kids, it's TECHNICALLY illegal to be in a cemetery after dark. Sure, you can get permits (that's what shows like Ghost Hunters and its ilk do), but who has time and money to do things like that? Anyway, we got to 13 stairs and there was a sheriff there reprimanding some other kids, so we turned around and headed back toward Cedar Rapids.
Suddenly, it got VERY cold in the car. For those of you who are unaware, when a ghost is near you, the air gets colder. The weird part about this is that the heat was on in the car. On full blast. Suddenly Kent, in the passenger seat, spoke up:
"There's something in the car."
I looked in the rear view mirror as the windows in the back started fogging up. Matt started fidgeting.
"What's wrong?" I asked
"Something's scratching my back."
"It's not here to hurt us. It's trying protect us..." Kent said.
"From what?"
"From that cemetery..."
After a few miles, Kent announced that the spirit had left the car. So in silence, we drove to Cedar Rapids, then back home to Victor. When we got back to my dad's house, Matt took off his shirt and started to walk away from us, into the brightly lit kitchen.
His back was covered in scratch marks.
We took pictures (I'm not sure what happened to them) and when we got them developed, there was a glowing orb in the picture next to Matt. Kent and I were clean, but Matt had a glowing orb. In every picture. It was... odd... to say the least.
Anyway, I have lots of stories about ghost hunting with friends, but being that ghost stories are more of a Halloween thing, I think I will save some of them for then. And anyone who wants to have their own ghost story to tell, I'm up for it any time. Just give me a call. I know some neat places, and if nothing else, at least it's a story to tell.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Amy
I’ve always been pretty open about the fact that I’ve only had one girlfriend in my life. The relationship only lasted six months, but I still find myself thinking of Amy every once in a while; I end up wondering whether I made the right choice.
I met Amy when I transferred to HLV my sophomore year of high school. I didn’t really pay a whole lot of attention to her, because honestly, I thought she was kind of annoying. I was also interested in another girl at the time, Jamie. I had a thing for Jamie almost instantly. She was smart, funny, and didn’t care what anybody else thought of her. I love those qualities in a person.
Anyway, Jamie and I were in almost all the same classes, with the exception of P.E. and a couple other classes. So we became close. I even bought her a necklace that Christmas, I was THAT into her. The class that came to heavily influence my relationships in high school was choir, which Jamie, Amy, Douche, Kitty, and later Mandy were all in with me. The second semester of my sophomore year I signed up for show choir for three reasons: I had just been in the school musical in the fall and felt I could use a few dance lessons, I loved singing THAT much, and Jamie was in it. Amy was ALSO in show choir with us, and that’s how I got to know her a little better (but still felt a little annoyed by her).
In the Spring every year, the Show Choir and Jazz Band took trips to other states to perform. I feel like there was more to these trips, but all I can really remember is staying in hotel rooms and sightseeing. Those were the more interesting parts, anyway. Well, that year we went to St. Louis.
Now, Douche was in Jazz Band (as were Kitty and Jamie… Maybe Amy, I can’t remember), so he was also on this trip. Our nightly regimen consisted of sitting in the hotel room and watching pay-per-view. I remember watching the movie “Say It Isn’t So” with a huge group of people on the bed in my room (four of the six total being girls, mind you). Anyway, Douche and Jamie had just started dating, so I was going through my “get-over-it” ritual of trying to ignore the girl I had feelings for in an effort to move on.
I was already feeling slightly depressed because of this the day we went to the zoo. Now I didn’t have a watch, and this was before every kid in America had a cell phone, so I had to stay close to someone I knew had a watch. Douche had a watch. So I had to trail him and Jamie in order to know what time it was. Amy was with us, as was Kitty and another friend of mine, Drew; though Drew and Kitty wandered off occasionally to join some of their other friends on the trip.
While hanging out at the zoo, apropos of nothing, Amy waited until we were alone and said this:
“Nobody likes you.” Then she walked away.
Boom. Instant depression. From that moment on, while I still followed the group (no watch, remember), I said nothing and hung back as far as I could without losing them. And because Amy and I were alone when she said it, nobody knew why I was suddenly upset. And for those of you who have not had the pleasure of being around me when I’m upset, I do not like to talk. At all. I don’t smile, I don’t speak, I don’t even look at people. I make it pretty obvious when I’m upset about something.
Well, finally, Jamie took me aside and asked me why I was upset. I had feelings for this girl, and she was one of my best friends, so I told her what happened. She tried her best to comfort me (didn’t work) and rejoined Douche and the rest of the group.
I assume she started telling people what I had told her, because a few minutes later, a slew of people started coming up to me, one by one, and telling me “I like you, Joel.” I shrugged it off, because, well, I didn’t want to hear it at that point. I was already gone. At the end of the day, we got on our bus and went back to the hotel. I sat in the hotel room alone while everyone else wandered around the halls and swam.
After about 20 minutes, there’s a small knock at the door. It was Amy.
“I didn’t mean what I said. I really do like you.”
I said nothing. I went and lied on the bed and continued to watch TV. She came and lied down next to me.
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”
Still nothing. Shortly thereafter, people started coming back up from the pool. As more people started coming into the room, my mood began to brighten and I became myself again. When this happened, I took Amy out in the hall and told her myself that what she said upset me. She hugged me and told me she hoped I didn’t hate her. I told her I didn’t and invited her to hang out in the room with us. She accepted and that’s when we rented the movie I mentioned earlier and watched it.
Fast forward: It’s now June. School is out for the year and I’m stuck at home. One day, Amy calls me out of the blue and we sit and talk for about an hour, when her dad comes home and she has to get off the phone. Now is a perfect time to reiterate for you, for those of you who don’t know or just never noticed: I can NOT read signals and hints from girls. Like, at all. If you go back and read the first story I told, you’ll see that it is a curse that I must live with. Well, Amy calls me a few more times that week before her friend Anna calls me from Amy’s house.
The conversation went something like this:
“Blah blah blah, bullshit bullshit, Amy likes you, you know.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Amy has a crush on you. She told me not to tell you.”
Then Amy got on the phone.
“Is that true?” I asked.
“…Yes…”
The game had now changed, ladies and gentlemen. I went from feeling like nobody would ever love me (outside family) to feeling like I owned the world. So from that moment on, I started calling her a little more. And we’d spend HOURS on the phone. Our first “date” came when she asked me to go to the Marengo fireworks with her and her family. Sure, why not, anything to spend time with her. So I borrowed my mom’s car and went and picked her up. That’s when I met her nine (!) brothers and sisters. Yes, that’s right, nine. It was… overwhelming, to say the least.
Anyway, so she and one of her sisters rode with me there. We walked around Marengo, holding hands and watching the fireworks. We ran into some people we knew and chitchatted.
About midnight or so, I took her and her sister home. We held hands the whole ride home and listened to the music on my CD player. When we got there, her sister went inside and Amy and I started saying good night. Now, I only remember one song from the CD we listened to because of this: “Sweet Emotion” by Aerosmith. It was playing as she started to get out of the car, but I grabbed her wrist and she sat back down. I stared deeply into her eyes (I love eyes, by the way. You can know a person in an instant by just gazing into their eyes) and asked her to officially be my girlfriend. She said yes (obviously, or there’d be no story) and we started dating officially on July 5 at about 12:30 A.M. I remember the exact day because I made the stupid joke that I almost lost my dating independence on Independence Day. Very very stupid joke. I was a dumb kid; Still kind of am.
We spent the rest of the summer hanging out (many days in secret while her dad was at work. Her mom loved me and tried to help us have alone time constantly). When school rolled around, we were VERY excited to tell our friends we were dating. Everyone knew about us. And when I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE. I had my chemistry teacher, who I’d never even met before I had class with him, ask me about our relationship. Seriously, it was everywhere within the first week.
We would also meet up between classes and duck into an empty stairwell or hallway and have quick make-out sessions. As of now, I’m VERY wary of using the word LOVE when speaking about how I feel about someone, but she and I were saying “I love you’s” very early on. And yes, she said it first. Well, she didn’t really say it, she wrote it down and her mom showed it to me. Same thing. We started working on the fall musical “Bye Bye Birdie” at that point and would sneak off, again, to make out in stairwells and hallways (even though I was driving her home every night, so we could have just waited until we got to the car).
In October, she told me she and her family were moving to Cedar Rapids. This sucked. We cried. A lot. Our friends cried. A lot. Anyway, we decided Cedar Rapids wasn’t that far away so we would talk on the phone and I’d go visit on the weekends. We did that for a while, until my dad wouldn’t pay for my gas to drive up there and both our parents began bitching about the phone bills. Then I would only go up every other weekend and we would only talk for, like, 20 minutes on the phone at night.
One day, during one of our phone conversations, she told me she hadn’t made any friends since she moved up there. This was after Thanksgiving some time, so it had been quite some time since she had moved. I asked her why and she told me:
“I don’t want to make new friends. I want to go back to HLV and be with you.”
I believe very strongly in friendship. In my opinion, friends are the most important thing to have in your life. My friends are my family, too. If I have a problem, I go to my friends, and MOST of them will be there to help me. If you break up with your significant other, your friends are the ones who will help you get over it. And it’s easier to lose love than friendship. So when she told me she was refusing to make friends, I told her:
“You HAVE to make friends. I can’t let you not have friends.”
Yet, she remained adamant about not making friends. So I dropped the subject for the moment. And we talked about how much we missed each other.
During this time apart, I noticed a few girls trying to get closer to me, including Jamie. And since I had feelings for Jamie longer than I even KNEW Amy, I found myself being attracted to her again. But I was with Amy, and I would NOT be a cheater, ever. Cheating is the most inexcusable act a person can do and I do not support people who do it. I’ve actually ended friendships with people because of it. Seriously, I am that against it.
Well, in January, Amy and I had the friend discussion again. And she was still refusing to make friends, and she said it was because of me. I was keeping her from having friends. Now, I know she didn’t mean it in that way, but that’s how I saw, and continue to see, it. So I did some thinking and finally took a drive up to see her. She was very distant and still adamant about coming to be with me. I didn’t want that. So I went home and thought very hard about what to do next.
I thought about how Amy was when we first met. I was annoyed by her. She was a Christian girl, which I was fine with. She had lots of friends and was happy. Now, though she was still Christian, she wasn’t following it as much and not going to church as much and cursing a LOT more. Anyone who knows me knows I have a filthy mouth, and it was rubbing off. She had no friends and seemed to only be happy when I was around. I had become her crutch and was corrupting her. There were… other things… that contributed to me corrupting her, but I won’t go into that. That stuff is private. But the most important thing: I loved her, and I couldn’t abide her turning into someone she wasn’t. Someone like me.
I decided I needed to break up with her.
Now, I’m not proud of this, but because I couldn’t drive up to do it in person, I called her and broke up with her over the phone. Now, I told her the reason was because I had some family stuff going on and couldn’t deal with everything. While at the time, that was true, that was not the reason. It was all of the things I have just told you, dear readers. Jamie seeming interested, Amy not having friends, me corrupting her… All of it.
Well, we remained friends through all of it, continuing to talk on IMs and occasionally the phone. But shortly after, Drew asked her to prom with us. I was a little uncomfortable at first, but eventually became okay with it. After prom, they officially started dating, which I was happy about. Drew was like Amy: He went to church, didn’t swear, and was just generally a good person. All the things I wasn’t.
After high school, Drew asked Amy to marry him. And they were engaged for 3 years before they finally broke up. Drew is now married to a different girl. Amy, on the other hand, is engaged again to some other guy. I met him once, and he seemed like a good guy, and he makes her happy, so I’m happy.
Occasionally, I wonder if I made the right choice in breaking up with her. I haven’t had a girlfriend since her, every girl I’ve had feelings for has decided I’d make a better friend than a boyfriend (then they stop talking to me), and I’m just generally lonely and unhappy… I sacrificed my own happiness for hers. And because of that… I think I made the right choice.
I met Amy when I transferred to HLV my sophomore year of high school. I didn’t really pay a whole lot of attention to her, because honestly, I thought she was kind of annoying. I was also interested in another girl at the time, Jamie. I had a thing for Jamie almost instantly. She was smart, funny, and didn’t care what anybody else thought of her. I love those qualities in a person.
Anyway, Jamie and I were in almost all the same classes, with the exception of P.E. and a couple other classes. So we became close. I even bought her a necklace that Christmas, I was THAT into her. The class that came to heavily influence my relationships in high school was choir, which Jamie, Amy, Douche, Kitty, and later Mandy were all in with me. The second semester of my sophomore year I signed up for show choir for three reasons: I had just been in the school musical in the fall and felt I could use a few dance lessons, I loved singing THAT much, and Jamie was in it. Amy was ALSO in show choir with us, and that’s how I got to know her a little better (but still felt a little annoyed by her).
In the Spring every year, the Show Choir and Jazz Band took trips to other states to perform. I feel like there was more to these trips, but all I can really remember is staying in hotel rooms and sightseeing. Those were the more interesting parts, anyway. Well, that year we went to St. Louis.
Now, Douche was in Jazz Band (as were Kitty and Jamie… Maybe Amy, I can’t remember), so he was also on this trip. Our nightly regimen consisted of sitting in the hotel room and watching pay-per-view. I remember watching the movie “Say It Isn’t So” with a huge group of people on the bed in my room (four of the six total being girls, mind you). Anyway, Douche and Jamie had just started dating, so I was going through my “get-over-it” ritual of trying to ignore the girl I had feelings for in an effort to move on.
I was already feeling slightly depressed because of this the day we went to the zoo. Now I didn’t have a watch, and this was before every kid in America had a cell phone, so I had to stay close to someone I knew had a watch. Douche had a watch. So I had to trail him and Jamie in order to know what time it was. Amy was with us, as was Kitty and another friend of mine, Drew; though Drew and Kitty wandered off occasionally to join some of their other friends on the trip.
While hanging out at the zoo, apropos of nothing, Amy waited until we were alone and said this:
“Nobody likes you.” Then she walked away.
Boom. Instant depression. From that moment on, while I still followed the group (no watch, remember), I said nothing and hung back as far as I could without losing them. And because Amy and I were alone when she said it, nobody knew why I was suddenly upset. And for those of you who have not had the pleasure of being around me when I’m upset, I do not like to talk. At all. I don’t smile, I don’t speak, I don’t even look at people. I make it pretty obvious when I’m upset about something.
Well, finally, Jamie took me aside and asked me why I was upset. I had feelings for this girl, and she was one of my best friends, so I told her what happened. She tried her best to comfort me (didn’t work) and rejoined Douche and the rest of the group.
I assume she started telling people what I had told her, because a few minutes later, a slew of people started coming up to me, one by one, and telling me “I like you, Joel.” I shrugged it off, because, well, I didn’t want to hear it at that point. I was already gone. At the end of the day, we got on our bus and went back to the hotel. I sat in the hotel room alone while everyone else wandered around the halls and swam.
After about 20 minutes, there’s a small knock at the door. It was Amy.
“I didn’t mean what I said. I really do like you.”
I said nothing. I went and lied on the bed and continued to watch TV. She came and lied down next to me.
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”
Still nothing. Shortly thereafter, people started coming back up from the pool. As more people started coming into the room, my mood began to brighten and I became myself again. When this happened, I took Amy out in the hall and told her myself that what she said upset me. She hugged me and told me she hoped I didn’t hate her. I told her I didn’t and invited her to hang out in the room with us. She accepted and that’s when we rented the movie I mentioned earlier and watched it.
Fast forward: It’s now June. School is out for the year and I’m stuck at home. One day, Amy calls me out of the blue and we sit and talk for about an hour, when her dad comes home and she has to get off the phone. Now is a perfect time to reiterate for you, for those of you who don’t know or just never noticed: I can NOT read signals and hints from girls. Like, at all. If you go back and read the first story I told, you’ll see that it is a curse that I must live with. Well, Amy calls me a few more times that week before her friend Anna calls me from Amy’s house.
The conversation went something like this:
“Blah blah blah, bullshit bullshit, Amy likes you, you know.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Amy has a crush on you. She told me not to tell you.”
Then Amy got on the phone.
“Is that true?” I asked.
“…Yes…”
The game had now changed, ladies and gentlemen. I went from feeling like nobody would ever love me (outside family) to feeling like I owned the world. So from that moment on, I started calling her a little more. And we’d spend HOURS on the phone. Our first “date” came when she asked me to go to the Marengo fireworks with her and her family. Sure, why not, anything to spend time with her. So I borrowed my mom’s car and went and picked her up. That’s when I met her nine (!) brothers and sisters. Yes, that’s right, nine. It was… overwhelming, to say the least.
Anyway, so she and one of her sisters rode with me there. We walked around Marengo, holding hands and watching the fireworks. We ran into some people we knew and chitchatted.
About midnight or so, I took her and her sister home. We held hands the whole ride home and listened to the music on my CD player. When we got there, her sister went inside and Amy and I started saying good night. Now, I only remember one song from the CD we listened to because of this: “Sweet Emotion” by Aerosmith. It was playing as she started to get out of the car, but I grabbed her wrist and she sat back down. I stared deeply into her eyes (I love eyes, by the way. You can know a person in an instant by just gazing into their eyes) and asked her to officially be my girlfriend. She said yes (obviously, or there’d be no story) and we started dating officially on July 5 at about 12:30 A.M. I remember the exact day because I made the stupid joke that I almost lost my dating independence on Independence Day. Very very stupid joke. I was a dumb kid; Still kind of am.
We spent the rest of the summer hanging out (many days in secret while her dad was at work. Her mom loved me and tried to help us have alone time constantly). When school rolled around, we were VERY excited to tell our friends we were dating. Everyone knew about us. And when I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE. I had my chemistry teacher, who I’d never even met before I had class with him, ask me about our relationship. Seriously, it was everywhere within the first week.
We would also meet up between classes and duck into an empty stairwell or hallway and have quick make-out sessions. As of now, I’m VERY wary of using the word LOVE when speaking about how I feel about someone, but she and I were saying “I love you’s” very early on. And yes, she said it first. Well, she didn’t really say it, she wrote it down and her mom showed it to me. Same thing. We started working on the fall musical “Bye Bye Birdie” at that point and would sneak off, again, to make out in stairwells and hallways (even though I was driving her home every night, so we could have just waited until we got to the car).
In October, she told me she and her family were moving to Cedar Rapids. This sucked. We cried. A lot. Our friends cried. A lot. Anyway, we decided Cedar Rapids wasn’t that far away so we would talk on the phone and I’d go visit on the weekends. We did that for a while, until my dad wouldn’t pay for my gas to drive up there and both our parents began bitching about the phone bills. Then I would only go up every other weekend and we would only talk for, like, 20 minutes on the phone at night.
One day, during one of our phone conversations, she told me she hadn’t made any friends since she moved up there. This was after Thanksgiving some time, so it had been quite some time since she had moved. I asked her why and she told me:
“I don’t want to make new friends. I want to go back to HLV and be with you.”
I believe very strongly in friendship. In my opinion, friends are the most important thing to have in your life. My friends are my family, too. If I have a problem, I go to my friends, and MOST of them will be there to help me. If you break up with your significant other, your friends are the ones who will help you get over it. And it’s easier to lose love than friendship. So when she told me she was refusing to make friends, I told her:
“You HAVE to make friends. I can’t let you not have friends.”
Yet, she remained adamant about not making friends. So I dropped the subject for the moment. And we talked about how much we missed each other.
During this time apart, I noticed a few girls trying to get closer to me, including Jamie. And since I had feelings for Jamie longer than I even KNEW Amy, I found myself being attracted to her again. But I was with Amy, and I would NOT be a cheater, ever. Cheating is the most inexcusable act a person can do and I do not support people who do it. I’ve actually ended friendships with people because of it. Seriously, I am that against it.
Well, in January, Amy and I had the friend discussion again. And she was still refusing to make friends, and she said it was because of me. I was keeping her from having friends. Now, I know she didn’t mean it in that way, but that’s how I saw, and continue to see, it. So I did some thinking and finally took a drive up to see her. She was very distant and still adamant about coming to be with me. I didn’t want that. So I went home and thought very hard about what to do next.
I thought about how Amy was when we first met. I was annoyed by her. She was a Christian girl, which I was fine with. She had lots of friends and was happy. Now, though she was still Christian, she wasn’t following it as much and not going to church as much and cursing a LOT more. Anyone who knows me knows I have a filthy mouth, and it was rubbing off. She had no friends and seemed to only be happy when I was around. I had become her crutch and was corrupting her. There were… other things… that contributed to me corrupting her, but I won’t go into that. That stuff is private. But the most important thing: I loved her, and I couldn’t abide her turning into someone she wasn’t. Someone like me.
I decided I needed to break up with her.
Now, I’m not proud of this, but because I couldn’t drive up to do it in person, I called her and broke up with her over the phone. Now, I told her the reason was because I had some family stuff going on and couldn’t deal with everything. While at the time, that was true, that was not the reason. It was all of the things I have just told you, dear readers. Jamie seeming interested, Amy not having friends, me corrupting her… All of it.
Well, we remained friends through all of it, continuing to talk on IMs and occasionally the phone. But shortly after, Drew asked her to prom with us. I was a little uncomfortable at first, but eventually became okay with it. After prom, they officially started dating, which I was happy about. Drew was like Amy: He went to church, didn’t swear, and was just generally a good person. All the things I wasn’t.
After high school, Drew asked Amy to marry him. And they were engaged for 3 years before they finally broke up. Drew is now married to a different girl. Amy, on the other hand, is engaged again to some other guy. I met him once, and he seemed like a good guy, and he makes her happy, so I’m happy.
Occasionally, I wonder if I made the right choice in breaking up with her. I haven’t had a girlfriend since her, every girl I’ve had feelings for has decided I’d make a better friend than a boyfriend (then they stop talking to me), and I’m just generally lonely and unhappy… I sacrificed my own happiness for hers. And because of that… I think I made the right choice.
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