A third the way from Idaho Falls to Pocatello is a conveniently placed rest stop that I like to stop at on days where I want to get away from work but am in no particular hurry to get home. It's housed on a patch of lava formations. I've only been on the sightseeing trail once or twice, but it's pretty neat that it's there regardless of whether or not I actually take advantage of it.

One day I was on my way back from work when I stopped at the rest stop and was asked to give someone a jump. The man that asked me was Irvin and that was when I first met him. Irvin and I helped a courier get on his way from Montana down to Salt Lake City. Unfortunately his battery was too dead for my jump start to get him going. Irvin ended up driving him to Blackfoot so that he could buy a new battery.

Irvin is the caretaker of the Lava Formation Rest Stop. Every morning or afternoon I stop by I usually see him out and about doing something. Sometimes he says hello and we chat for a bit, other times he keeps his nose to the task ahead of him - whatever it might be.

I've seen a number of travellers come and go. A whole lot of them seem to go out of their way to litter up the place. Today I saw someone try to make a five foot shot with his McDonald's bag and declined to actually pick it up and throw it away when he missed. A lot of cigarette butts here and there. But day in and day out Irvin keeps the place presentable.

In elementary school we had Uncle Bud. Uncle Bud was the all-purpose janitor. He was extremely popular among the kids there (I'm guessing because he got to play in sludge and dirt we could only dream of). He was so popular with students and administrators - and he so loved the school that he worked for - that even when he retired he was kept around as the lunchroom monitor, switching the talk light that always seemed to be on yellow (whisper) and red (shut up) but never green (talk). He'd tell us to settle down and for the most part (to the best of our elementary school kid abilities) we listened.

The janitor of Seabrook Intermediate was a Hispanic man. Long after I left the school I still saw him at the Whataburger by the school on Saturday mornings. His English may not have been so great, but it probably was just fine and we never took the time to find out because playing in mess isn't quite as cool to junior high school kids as it is to gradeschoolers.

I never knew who the janitors were at Clear Lake High.

It's interesting how we sometimes lose site of those who clean up after our mess.

I got my license when I turned sixteen. I was a decent enough driver and got more time behind the wheel than most, thanks to Dad.

It didn't take long before I started wanting to just drive around. I had practically nothing in the way of a social life at the time, but while I had nowhere to go I determined that I really liked to drive.

We had two cars at the time: a Dodge Caravan and a red convertable. Unsurprisingly, I chose the latter. My earliest driving exploits were up and down Nasa Road 1, the only street in the area I was familiar with. At some point I discovered Red Bluff, a rural road oasis in Pasadena. It had a whopping 55mph speed limit. I felt like I was flying. In a testament to my dangerous streak, when I had the road to myself I would even take my seat belt off for minutes at a time before putting it back on.

I have this odd tick about never wanting turn around and drive back the way I came, so I eventually settled on a <45mph circle on Highway 146, Nasa Rd. 1, and Red Bluff. While I could have gone faster and drove on the 55mph stretch of Red Bluff as well as 50/40 Bay Area Blvd (the "Clear Lake Loop" in my terminology), the RedBluff/146/NR1 ("Seabrook Loop") had something the Clear Lake Loop: A view of the city skyline.

Okay, it wasn't really the city skyline. It was a refinery off in the distance. But all of the lights and immediate pollution made me think it could have been the Houston skyline. At that point, I didn't know what the skyline really looked like. To this day, off in the distance, it looks like some sort of hellish, futuristic Apokalypse city (comic book reference).

It wasn't long after that I got frustrated with going around in circles and decided to start driving southbound on 146 to wherever it was that I would get bored and start driving back. 146 gets really dark in some places, which made it all the more exciting.

My biggest adventure was a road trip up to Katy. Except that it was absolutely the most boring drive ever because I was still afraid of urban (and suburban) freeways, so I took the ultra-long way on Highway 6. So instead of flying by at 55mph, I was stopping at countless stopsigns with a speed limit that often dipped to 35mph. But I eventually got to where I was headed.

My first foray on to urban freeways was by accident. I was finally able to muster up the courage to drive on the freeway. My trips down 146 were replaced by flying down Interstate 45 towards Galveston. I always headed towards Galveston because, lest I end up in the big, bad city, it was the only direction I could go. The speed limit was still 55mph (by federal law at the time), but I never had to stop! Woooweeee!

Well one day I was driving in my car with Jay and we went northbound on I45 for reasons I cannot entirely recall. At some point, I missed the last exit before the big, bad city and found myself accidentally turning off on the eastern arm of 610. This had me freaking out on a number of levels. First, I'd gotten off the only freeway that I'd known. Second, I had somehow managed to end up by the sea (Houston sea port) despite going in what I thought was the opposite direction. And third, I had somehow jumped from Interstate Forty-Five to Six-Hundred-And-Ten... that's a factor of 13.5555555555555555! I calculated this number in my head as I flew down the freeway in abject horror.

That was the last time I took the freeway for a long, long time. Two months at least. Maybe four!

I was talking to Anna last night on IM. When she left, she said she was going to go play Bard's Tale and some other game. I did a double-take at Bard's Tale cause I haven't heard from that game in forever. Could a new version have come out? Sort of. They apparently bought the naming rights, but not the engine or the fiction involved.

Part of me is upset at the lifting of an honored part of my childhood for a nearly unrelated game, but the other part of me realizes: By today's standards, the original game sucked. Even the story, which they could have used, was itself pretty bland.

But once upon a time those games were the absolute best ever. EVER!

And it actually still has something over the more modern games that I've seen that appeals specifically to me: multi-character, single-player mode. Basically, I could control 6 (in the first and third game) or 7 (in the second) characters at once. Obviously they all moved together, but they fought separately (the game was non-dexterious, another benefit). It was one of my first introductions to considering inter-character relationships. Since I couldn't be all of the characters at once, the characters I created were probably the first characters I ever created anywhere.

The characters had really, really stupid names and were pretty crude in nature, but when my brother would take over the computer I'd go outside and start playing some more, playing all of the characters and have the characters talking to one another. I was never as good at it as my brother was. Though I don't think he ever solved the game, it was really fun to make copies of his characters, renaming them, and going around to thrash the weaker characters that were in spitting distance of The Guild (the starting point). Since I was aping my brother's characters (copying and renaming them), there wasn't too much challenge there so the things that could have made stuff really interesting (like characters dying) never occured. It wasn't until much later that I tried on my own, let characters die, and came up with much less pathetic names*. At that point, however, I was sixteen or seventeen and had a driver's license (not to mention a 486), so I stopped when the nostalgia wore off.

At some point a couple years back I started thinking about my characters again and trying to come up with an interesting story involving them. Unfortunately, the idea got tangled up and had too much spillover, so it'll probably never happen.

This site has all kinds of information on all three of the Bard's Tale games as well as some BT novels that were apparently written. Unfortunately, they appear to have exceeded some bandwidth limitations so a lot of the site is down presently. I'll link to it again next month when bandwidth starts anew.

I tried to get ahold of some ROMs or whatever it might take to play the old games, but unfortunately I couldn't find very much useful. There are some all-in-one copies on Amazon.com, but I'm not sure I'm willing to pay $60 for a used copy of a game that probably won't work on my system anyway. If I were that serious, I could start thinking about EverQuest.

On the other hand, the documentation alone that came with those games could well be worth the price of admission. Next time I'm down in Texas, I'll have to see what remnants of the original haven't been thrown away yet.

* - For those you dying of curiosity, in the section below I list the characters names as best I can recall them.

[Read More!]

As one might expect, temperatures that hover in the teens are not particularly conducive to spending a lot of time outdoors in the wind early in the morning. As such, the local high school kids that are waiting for the bus wait in a convenience store located on the route. It happens to be the convenience store I stop by in the morning to either fill up my car or myself.

There is a young lady there. She's of amazonian height (okay, she's about 6'1") and not of modest weight. Not huge, mind you, but is packing on an extra forty pounds or so in my estimation. Her blond hair is almost shoulder-length. She wears a little too much make-up but has a very genuine-looking smile.

There is absolutely nothing remarkable about her appearance beyond her height and that can be problematic in a female, self-perception wise. She dresses nicely, but not with any particular trendiness. Though apparently very outgoing, she doesn't seem particularly prone to making her appearence outrageous, sticking to sweaters, slacks, and generally conservative (even office) attire.

What I find interesting is how she remains the center of most of the conversation morning in and morning out. She's a pretty spiffy dresser and, though I see her only five or ten minutes on alternating mornings, I have gathered that she is reasonably popular at her school

She reminds me of a few girls from my high school. While not knocking people over in the appearence department, they managed to make up for it with sheer personality and panache. While I may or may not have secretly envied most of the popular kids during my younger years, I never really respected them. Most of them were popular based on looks or athleticism or ability to cut other people down. Usually looks. But those that managed to make all the friends in spite of average or less-than-average appearence not only won my envy, but won my respect. This was particularly true of females, who face a more uphill climb in this area.

I guess it all goes back to chubby young Alex who blamed his weight on all of his social failings. I felt held back and couldn't help but admire those that managed to break through that. I wish I'd found it as inspiring as I did admirable because I might have developed the higher locus of control that I eventually did in college.

What's particularly sad, looking back at it, was that I had more opportunities by virtue of my being male. I've often said that in high school (and, to a much lesser extent, beyond) if you're shy you are better off to be a girl and if you're ugly you are better off being a guy. It always seemed to me that the shy thing was more fixable than the appearence thing. So that Gas Station Girl and her 1993-97 ilk managed to overcome the appearence thing by improving the personality thing impresses me all the more.

This story reminds me of my high school government teacher. As one could guess by my blogging name, Alex is my middle name and not my first. It's a very helpful thing at times (which I'll post on in the future), but in high school I hated it because every semester I'd have to decide whether or not I wanted to bother telling them that I don't go by Rayford (this wasn't a problem in elementary school because all the teachers knew my mother). I was a little skittish about it my freshman year and some called me Rayford throughout. By my sophomore and junior years I started to drift back to Alex. By my senior year I was exlusively Alex.

In the first semester of my second year, I had Mr. Garland for government. Mr. Garland was something of a dour man that was bald with a moustache who insisted on wearing a suit every day to class. When he went through the original roll call, he finally got to me: Rayford Whitlock?

"I go by Alex."

"I don't care."

"Uhmm, okay. Present, I guess."

"John Zvolonek?"

"Present"

And so for that one class I was Rayford or "Mr. Whitlock" all year long.

The following spring, the school started instituting a tigher dress code which included some unconcionable things as tucking in your shirt and not bearing your midriff. Some industrious kid made a good deal of money making "Clear Lake Penetentiary" t-shirts with a giant bar code on front. They became pretty popular among kids who were outraged by the new policies and wanted to register their protest. After all, if you have to tuck in your shirt you might as well be in prison, right?

Kids are funny, aren't they?

[Link via Kuff]

When we were in junior high, I took theatre class with a kid named Amon Duncan. Amon was a pro that I'm sure went in to theatre to some degree. One of his greatest skills was the ability to fall - at will - as though his head had just been hit with a two-ton pipe. For whatever reason (probably the same reason that I found the Bribansi Brothers so fun) I was just fascinated by this. I watched every movement and within time, I was able to mimic his abilities passably. I ended up using that in a thankfully lost silent movie made with Jay and Chip.

Around this time, Jay and I would play this "game" in the courtyard at Seabrook Intermediate. As with most of what we did, it was more play-acting than competitive or challenging. Basically, we'd run up to a bench, pivot off of it and land flat on our backs. We called ourselves the Flying Bribansi Brothers. In our imaginary world, this was circus-worthy or gymnastical to some degree, but back in the real world it was two 11 year olds falling flat on their backs (when we did it right - our arms if we did it wrong and that hurt!).

I don't know why, but there is something fun about being able to fall down with drama and skill.

Eel's basement apartment is under a house with a very icy driveway. Over the past week I've learned on no less than three occasions that It's not as fun to dramatically fall down as it used to be.

Okay, actually, it is as fun.

I am just a lot less skilled.

And it hurts a lot more.

Finding people to each lunch with in high school was always a struggle for me. Not because I didn't have any friends, but because (a) my real friends never had lunch with me, (b) my casual friends insisted on eating lunch with people I had no desire to, and (c) my social circle wasn't huge.

One semester I found a group of people in the second category: people I didn't mind hanging out with and didn't mind hanging out with me. It was the ROTC crowd, but they were generally cool guys. Though I never took them up on it, I actually got invited to real life high school parties.

There were two red-headed girls in the group. The first was in the group when I was. She was part ROTC and part punk. She always seemed very interested in talking to me and even more in initiating some sort of physical contact with me. She'd touch my arm at every opportunity. Sometimes she'd caress it while staring into my eyes. Our last class of the day were in rooms right next to each other and she'd seek me out at the end of each and every one. She'd take my arm some days, my hand others, and one day in the hallway out of the blue she almost kissed me - she tried for the lips but I wasn't paying attention and she hit the cheek right beside.

In retrospect, I think she might have liked me.

In retrospect, I think if she'd hit me over the head with a baseball bat and said, "I like you, you fool!" she might have made it obvious enough for me to grasp at the time.

In retrospect, it's a good thing she didn't and that I didn't.

Then there was the other red head. She started sitting at the table the week that I left. She was, in fact, the very reason that I left.

She was a nice enough girl. Didn't smile a whole lot, but then again that's not unusual. She was total ROTC, which left me a little more generally indifferent to her than I was with the first red head. But there was one problem: the very site of her made me physically ill.

The thing is that, objectively speaking, she wasn't an unattractive person. She had an average build and an average face. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about her appearance other than the nauseating way that it turned my stomach. It was the strangest thing. At first I thought it was just a weird thing I would get over after a couple of days. But instead of getting better, it got worse. By Wednesday I couldn't eat anymore at lunch. By the end of lunch Friday I'd taken a trip to the bathroom to vomit (none came out).

To this day, I don't know what it was.

For as long as I've known him, Linus has been unusually well-adjusted. Nothing symbolizes that more than his voluntarily late entrance into the dating world. While Jay and I were going crazy over our respective Sarahs and our ability to obtain them, he was working on much worthier and less infuriating and depressing pursuits. I don't know what he was doing, but it must have been more worthy and less infuriating than what Jay and I were.

While Jay and I (and 75% of the guys on the BBS) used ACME as a female-type acquisition tool, Linus oddly chose instead to use it in order to just talk to people. He was philosophical and patient with our whining, but it just wasn't his thing. The more I got to know him, the less right this all was. So Jay and I dragged him practically kicking and screaming into the world of chasing female-types. If he was remotely interested in considering possibly maybe telling a girl that he might could very well be interested in seeing her in a social capacity without other people present, Jay and I acted like we hit a goldmine and used every ounce of effort we had to get him to "go for it" (did I mention that Jay and I were huge hypocrites?).

And eventually he did. He asked a girl out, she said yes. She then proceeded to act really, really weird. He asked another girl out and the process repeated itself. He was understandably agitated, confused, and frustrated.

At that point we were able to relate to him even better than before and our mission was accomplished.

Dateline: 1995-96

I never really went through a "girls are icky" stage. I wasn't a horndog growing up, but there had always been an almost clinical fascination with people of the female sort. With the exception of my neighbor's sister, I really didn't have any acquaintances that were female and about my age. When I eventually did become interested in females at about the fifth grade, I hadn't the slightest clue how to interact with them.

That all changed in late junior high and high school when I picked up a couple of female friends. When I started getting on ACME I started collecting more. Even with my female friends and sorta relationships, however, there was a failure to completely comprehend how these strange people worked. As I did eventually begin to understand them, I still couldn't relate to them at all. They were alien to me.

In that sense, it's fairly natural that the first girl that I could truly understand and relate to I fell in love with. Her name was Ora Walls and we were only seventeen. I really didn't realize how important that was at the time.

We met on ACME. She'd signed on and became instantly popular with just about everyone. I was out of town when she first logged on so when I first came on she messaged me. She was interested in getting to know this person that she'd heard so much about. We hit it off instantly.

As with many femaliens on ACME, she was pursued by several guys. I became her pointman while she tried to sort it all out. I was coming off a sorta relationship where I'd perpetually have to keep competing for my girlfriend so I had little or no interest in competing for her. It was refreshing, in a way, because it meant that I could be a lot more open with her without worrying about my status or potential with her. Since I was out of the hunt, she could be similarly open with me.

That all changed when out of nowhere she developed an interest in me. At first I resisted it because it disrupted the nice equilibrium that we had. There were also a number of other problems. Mostly that she just wasn't right at all.

I was attracted to short and slender girls. She, on the other hand, was 5'8" and had quite a figure. I wanted somebody more on the cute side but she was more on the feisty side. She wasn't who I was supposed to fall in love with at all.

But yet there was something undeniably there. She understood me in ways that no one else did at the time (Jay and I were on the outs). I could be so much more open with her and felt that she was being truly open with me. Most importantly, in a world of superficial and plastic girls, she was completely genuine and there was enormous depth in the way she thought and felt and an astounding connection with the way that I thought and felt at the time.

I can say, without hesitation, that she completely changed my world. While I thought it might be better if I fell for someone that lived closer by or fit more of my pre-set criteria, there was no way I could pass up an opportunity with someone that was so there, available, and right for me.

While I was coming to these conclusions, she was coming to quite different ones. Thoughtful and deep though she was, she was a thoughtful and deep seventeen year old with a romantic history as scant as my own. She felt that her charismatic talents might be wasted on someone such as myself. For some of the same reasons that I conquered when making my determination that I wanted to be with her, she made the determination that she didn't want to be with me.

It all came to a head one night when we were supposed to see each other. She never showed and things were never the same again. All that I will say about that evening is that there was the possibility that she was pregnant with a child that wasn't mine. To give an idea of how devoted I was to her, I honestly contemplated being the stand-in father to her child. Maybe it wasn't mine, but since it was half hers I knew that I could love it all the same.

There are two reasons that this never came to pass. The first reason is that however closely I looked at the situation, she didn't want to be with me. I could be the best stepdad on the planet and it would probably have only left me babysitting the kid while she was trying to do better. There was something intrinsically wrong about that and even in my drive to be with her, I knew it. The second reason it came to pass is that it turned out that she wasn't pregnant. Part of me was sorry that she wasn't because it meant definitively that we wouldn't be together. Part of her was sorry that she wasn't because it meant definitively that she and the non-existent baby's father would never get together.

Looking back, we were pretty messed up kids. We were mature for our age, but our maturity had an isolating effect which ironically stunted our social growth and in a very different way made us considerably less mature than our peers. We didn't know how to deal with the thoughts and feelings that no one around us seemed to be thinking and feeling. We didn't know how to answer the questions that no one else thought to even ask.

Even in the many ways we hurt each other, it was only because we were so right for one another.

There's more to the story than all this. It didn't end with the non-existent child or even that heartbreak. There was a second round and, in a different way, a third and fourth one. But sometimes the story is best left incomplete.

Update: I mis-typed a rather crucial word in this post, thankfully caught by Amanda. Replaced and bolded.

Michael Williams's The Social Hierarchy reminds me of a common complaint I had about Clear Lake High School:

It seemed that the top 75% of girls would only go out with the top 25% of guys, and the top 75% of guys would only go out with the top 25% of girls. No one seem to notice the discrepency and yet they all complained about being single. This point became particularly clear during Prom season when I would hear both sides of the male/female partnering say something to the effect of "S/He's fine for prom, but I could really do better."

There's a reason that despite spending four years there, I never went out with a single Clear Lake female-type.

It also reminds me of something I've often said about young people and their love lifes: If you're ugly, you better hope you're a boy. If you're shy, you'd better hope you're a girl. It's much better to be a shy girl than an ugly girl and it's much better to be an ugly guy than a shy one. It's on a spectrum, of course. A social-phobic girl may have it worse than a moderately ugly guy and a super-ugly guy will probably have it worse than a moderately shy one.