Thursday, December 22, 2005

I REMEMBER IT LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY

I don't know if all this maudlin shit I've been scribbling down has anything to do with christmas, but I suspect it does. When I left home it was after a row with my mom. I had wrecked the car they'd given me for my birthday, and had to hitch hike home from school. Now hitching home from school was a stress inducing experience. You never knew when a truck load of rednecks would come along and chase you, and if they caught you, kick your ass and cut off your hair. On this particular day there were no rednecks, no chase, just the drunk asshole that picked me up and gave me the white knuckle ride of my life down the windy bee caves road (back when it was still 2 lanes and not 4 with a turn lane). He missed my driveway by a mile and i had to walk through the woods to my house. Needless to say, I was still kind of stressed out when I got home and my mom decided I was pouting about the car, and how ungrateful I was and blah blah blah. One thing led to another, and I ended up packing some clothes into a garbage bag and bailing. My mom chased me out of the house with a stew pot and hurled it at me, losing her balance on the throw and almost turfing out on the porch, and what did I do? I went to help her only to be met with a hurling of recriminations and insults. I grabbed my bag of shit and hit the road with that north country voice drilling insults into the back of my head ( the english are really good at calling you out, especially the ones from the north, apparently).
I walked to the main road and stuck out my thumb again. This time a classmate picked me up and took me to my girlfriends apartment on east riverside drive...miles away from westlake hills and home. With my garbage bag and my soul. And while I stayed connected to my parents, in some sense, I never turned back.
I still have that garbage bag...just a pantry away.
And I remember...like it was yesterday.

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