Dear Prospective Future Employers

Dear Prospective Future Employers,

You may have heard of a man named Chez Pazienza. He’s a blogger from New York City who used to work for CNN. I say used to because he was fired. For blogging. Apparently, CNN had a problem with him expressing his opinion.

Or, you may have heard of Avery Doninger, a student in Connecticut who was forced off the student council after calling administrators “douche bags,” in a blog she wrote outside of school that wasn’t hosted on school servers. I can only hope that the irony of that isn’t lost on anyone. For the record, she won re-election from write in ballots, but was not allowed to serve.

I’m also reminded of a blog post following this past year’s NCTE conference where a school district heavily suggested that its employees don’t post or create blogs so that they can’t get into trouble with conduct unbecoming charges.

Recently, I was placed in a high school where there could be a high likelihood of me running into a student that I see fairly often in my own private life. When this student discovered that my practicum placement was at his school, he told me not to talk to him or embarrass him. I gave him a hard time about it outside of the school, but he had nothing to worry about. Even if I had ever seen him, I would have more than likely not acknowledged him unless I was acknowledged first. When I am in a school environment, I act professionally.

What do all of these things have to do with each other? This is an important point, so I am going to make it obvious:

Once I walk out the door, I am no longer yoked to you. Once I walk out that door, I am no longer Mike Edinger, Employee; I am Mike Edinger, Private Person.

I’m going to show up on time. In fact, I’m certain that I will quite often show up early and even stay late. I’m going to show up clean-shaven with professional clothes. I’m going to do my job to the best of my ability. I’m going to take criticism and lessons in order to be able to become better at my job.

But my time is exactly that: my time. And what I do with it is of absolutely no fucking concern of yours.

So here’s how it’s going to work. For those one hundred twenty-eight hours a week I am not working, you have no control over my life whatsoever. I’m going to express whatever opinions I have in whatever manner I see fit. I’m going to enjoy my hobbies and interests without fear of how I am perceived because it’s taking place in a completely different sphere of my life. I’m going to hang out with my friends; pictures are going to be taken. Some of those pictures might even end up on Facebook or MySpace. In some of them, I might even be holding an alcoholic beverage. That’s perfectly fine. You know why? Because I’m twenty one fucking years old, and so are my friends. It’s legal. I’m not going to be punished for doing something that isn’t illegal.

In exchange, I’m willing to be one of the smartest, hardest working people you’ll ever hire.

However, if you’ve got a problem with any of this, well, I assure you, the loss is much bigger for you than it is for me.

Sincerely,

Mike Edinger, Free Person

Once again, major props to xkcd.com, and of course the above mentioned (and numerous, nameless others), who've inspired me.

The Best Thing About Being in English Education...

Is that I get to write a lot, which makes it really easy to have stuff to post. This is my literacy autobiography that I turned in for LIT313- Literacy Assessment and Intervention. It sounds really boring, but the class is really fun, and I think I did something pretty interesting with the autobiography.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost nine o'clock. I could leave soon. I walked over to the shoe rack near the door and grabbed my sneakers. They were getting pretty beat up and worn out. I'd be getting a new pair in a couple of months when school was about to start again. I tied the white laces that had long since been turned brown by dirt, dust, and grass stains.

I looked around the house for any stray books I might have forgotten. There were two in the living room. I managed to stuff them into my bulging backpack and zip it shut, the seams screaming and holding on for dear life. I lifted the bag onto my shoulders with a grunt. I was ready to begin my trek.

That bag was always heavy. It must've weighed at least twenty pounds. That might not seem like a lot, but when you realize that twenty pounds was a full fifth of my 100 pound, fourth grade body weight; it gets put into perspective real quick. It's a burden I carried with pride.

Every week I would make a trip to the library. I had to walk because my babysitter couldn't drive. I was fine with that; I generally enjoyed the walk. I began the journey around nine or ten in the morning. The backpack seemed lighter then. Maybe it was because the temperature and humidity hadn't spiked yet.

Nelly, my babysitter, would help me cross the street right in front of her house. There were no sidewalks for the first block and a half, so I had to be careful. I stood as far right as possible, walking on the grass of front lawns when I could, and the dusty gravel shoulder when I couldn't. I picked up the sidewalk as I entered the well ordered residential outskirts of downtown Baldwinsville. I lost the sidewalk again as I passed the Moose Lodge and the decrepit, crumbling train station. I smelled seafood and hamburger grease as I passed the seafood restaurant and then the Burger King. There was the run down dive bar, Mickey's Tavern. After the Sunoco gas station was the beat up Gould's Pumps warehouse. Next to the warehouse was the cleaner, white brick Gould's Pumps office building where my father worked. I hung a right at the dark brown Baldwinsville Commons office building. A block up the street was the long rectangular building that was the Baldwinsville Public Library.

I made that trip every week. I loved to read. It wasn't until recently that I began to realize what really drove me to take that literal walk, and later, many figurative ones. For me, it's always been about the stories. Stories do so much for me. They entertain me. They educate me. They let me connect to people.

My earliest memory of stories is with my mother. When I was a toddler, she told me the stories of Little Ludwig and his dog named Bow Wow. These were characters that were used by her father when she was growing up. There was never a set story, she would jus think of something when I climbed up on her lap and said, both adorable and annoying at the same time, "Mommy, mommy, tell me a story!"

And she did, every time, without fail. Ludwig and Bow Wow went to London and saw Big Ben. They saw the pyramids in Egypt. They dug a hole straight through to China, a feat that I would try (and fail) to replicate. There were many other adventures, great and small, that I can't remember from so long ago.

I was also able to get closer with my father. Every week, on the walk back to Nelly's house, I would stop in and see my dad. We'd sit in the lobby of the Guild's Pumps building and he'd listen to me talk about the books I picked out. Looking back, I feel bad about making him listen to me ramble on about books he had no interest in. His patience was an encouragement, though. A few years later, when I began my science fiction kick, I would raid his book collection. Anne McCaffery and Piers Anthony were my favorites from his bookshelf. The favor was returned a few years later when he lost his job and suddenly had a surplus of free time to raid mine. I turned him on to Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind. I'm a little disappointed I couldn't do the same with Tim O'Brien and Hunter S. Thompson (yeah, right), but c'est la vie.

Of course, other people's stories were only good enough for so long, and reading is only one half of literacy. For a long time, I was only interested in stories from other people. It didn't occur to me that I had my own stories to tell that other people might find interesting or useful. Not only has writing allowed me to share my stories, it's given me another avenue to connect with other people.

My hobbies, more than most other hobbies I think, are very community oriented. The biggest one is probably a game called Magic: the Gathering. It's a strategic collectable card game that is dynamic and ever changing. There are players all over the country, the world even, and we communicate primarily through internet message boards. That alone opens up many doors for literacy. Not only do I need to know how to read and write, on top of needing to know how to work the bulletin board software. All of this in addition to being literate of the rules of the game and the every changing trends within the game.

Of course, the game being so community oriented, there's much more to be written about than just strategy and ideas. There is a lot of writing to be done for and about the community. Many of us have traveled hundred of miles to meet and play against each other. There's really no other reason for doing that than being able to say, "Yeah, I drove to D.C. and met up with the Elgins and the Hatfields and had a blast," or, "Dude, it was so awesome going to Portland and meeting up with Bardo and Pinder." We do it for the story, because it is the story and the journey that brings us together. Someone has to record the story; it encourages more and bigger adventures to take place.

There is a genre of writing that's fairly unique to this hobby called the tournament report. It is part box score, part fishing tale, and part bar story. Most tournament reports are just the facts of what happened to the writer in the tournament. The good report writers describe what they learned about the game and their deck. What the great writers, and what I try to do, is write about what we've learned about ourselves and the community. The great writers chronicle the happenings of the event that take place away from the game itself; it is in those moments that connections are forged.

It was through these that I really began writing. Writing allows me to look inside myself and learn something new. I don't flatter myself and think my story is all that important on a large scale, but I like to share it anyway. I write for myself, but I post it regardless. If anyone can take anything from what I write, then I am flattered. It means I was doing something right.

Books have taken me all over the world- this one and others. They've taken me to the past, and through them I have seen the future. I've sailed around the world and across the galaxy. Writing has served as the impetus to create my own stories and to tell them. Both reading and writing have allowed me to interact with numerous people on a meaningful level. Literacy for me has been a journey. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the journey is what is important. The journey is where the story is. As I stand on the verge of a great adventure, both literal and metaphorical, I can still feel that backpack. It's not getting heavier, but it is getting fuller. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Adolescence

This is a story that I've told maybe three people. Also, for the record, the fact that tomorrow is Valentine's Day is completely coincidental.

Adolescence is a period of extremes. At no other point are the peaks and valleys of life so apparent. We run the gamut of emotions every day. We go from fearless to insecure and back again at the drop of a hat. We are convinced of our immortality, only to face our own fallibility at every turn. Living through adolescence is like running the gauntlet, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We learn and grow through adversity, and as a result, we change and learn about ourselves the most during adolescence.

There is one event in particular that has had such a profound effect on me. I think it is safe to say that no other event before or since has had a bigger impact on me. It greatly influenced how I view life and myself. It occurred when I was sixteen. The ages 13-15 weren’t all that remarkable for me. Looking back, I don’t think I changed all that much until the later half of my sophomore year in high school. I could write about what I was like in seventh grade; that I was a lot like I was in fifth grade, and that by ninth grade, very little had changed. But that wouldn’t make for a very interesting story, now would it?

When I was a junior in high school, I had a part time job at Burger King. It was there that I met a girl named Julie. Through work, we became friends. More accurately, I became her friend. She was going through a rough patch, and I was there. I would listen to her and talk to her.

I was never particularly attracted to her. She was a few years older than me, and also had a kid. She wasn’t too bright, and was probably doomed to a dead end, lower class existence. She was, however, quite attracted to me. I tried to ignore it and act as if it was nothing.

During spring break of that year, I was planning on getting a new piercing. I asked her to come with me for moral support. At the time, my parents were very conservative when it came to body modification and had threatened to kick me out if I got another piercing. I wanted someone with me to make sure I went through with it.

Afterwards, we were at her apartment. I know I’m not the first person this has happened to, and I know that I won’t be the last, but one thing led to another, and we end up having sex. A very big, very important detail: It was my first time. I had no idea how it happened, and today, almost five years later, I still don’t know. I’m sure you can tell where things are going from here.

We “dated” for about a month. I use that in a very loose sense of the word. I never should have let it happen, or to allow her to get the impression that how I felt about her changed.

A few days after we broke up, she tells me she’s back with her ex-boyfriend. I don’t really care, but I remember her telling me that he wasn’t the nicest guy, and remind her of this. She just shrugged and said it was okay because he was going to buy her a new living room set. It was at this point that I said one of the dumber things I’ve ever said in my life, “Wow. You do realize that kind of like prostitution, right?” Definitely not the smartest thing I could have said.

Things exploded. I don’t remember what else was said that night, but there was a huge, loud argument. I saw her in a completely different light.

Suddenly, instead of having an ambivalent attitude towards the whole thing, I became disgusted. I was revolted, not only at her, but also at myself. I didn’t understand how I could do something so incredibly stupid.

Through conversations with her friends and co-workers, I became well aware that she was promiscuous, to put it nicely. It didn’t actually hit me until a friend asked me, “Is she clean?” It was like a punch to the gut. All of a sudden, I was thinking about all the bad things that could happen. I started to think about all the negative effects on not only my life, but on the life of any person I chose to be with in the future. As teenagers, we really do think we’re invulnerable and invincible. Sure, we give lip service to the idea that bad things can happen, but we don’t really think, “Bad things can happen to me.” I was incredibly lucky; bad things didn’t happen to me this time, at least not on a physical level.

Mentally, I was a mess. Words simply cannot describe how terrible I was feeling. Without trying to sound incredibly arrogant, I am a smart person. I generally don’t make stupid decisions or mistakes. Yet here I was faced with an enormous error in judgment. I was slapped in the face by the reality that I was fallible, that I could make mistakes, and more importantly, that my decisions have consequences.

It took me a long time to get over this. For probably well over a year, I would have given anything to take it back. Before this, I had never known was true regret was. Now I did, and it felt awful. True regret is a pit in your stomach, a crawling in your chest, and it keeps you awake at night.

Lest you think it was only negative things that resulted from this, I should explain how I finally got over it. What allowed me to come to grips with everything was acceptance of what happened. I eventually came to accept the fact that I couldn’t change what happened. I can’t change the past, and if I could, I wouldn’t. Those events shape who I am today, and I won’t change that. It is for this very reason that I no longer regret that or anything I’ve done.

What They Don't Tell You about Snowstorms

In honor of the totally shitty weather this week, and the foot and a half of snow received two weeks ago, I present:

What They Don’t Tell You about Snowstorms

Let’s start off with what they do tell you about snowstorms; because I assure you, it’s all true. Yes, it snows so hard that you can’t even see your hand in front of your face, or ten feet out the window. Yes, it’s like being surrounded by a white sheet. They are called white outs for a reason, and the name is apt. Yes, the snow is fluffy, and falls in large, wet clumps. Yes, the wind is gusty, and it whips up more snow. And yes, it does indeed bury everything.

It’s true, every child goes to bed at night hoping and praying for a snowstorm so that school will be cancelled the next day. I certainly did. On the days school is cancelled because of snow, as soon as we hear about it, we rush to the window to see how much snow is there, and if it’s still falling, before we go back to sleep. Yes, snowstorms do seem to erase everything. The image of everything outside covered in freshly fallen snow certainly has a majestic connotation, and while we don’t sit inside getting warm by the crackling fire, it really is a winter wonderland.

Except when it isn’t.

You see, what they don’t tell you about snowstorms is how incredibly frustrating and annoying they are. Generally, snowstorms aren’t that devastating like a tornado or a hurricane. They’re just a giant inconvenience for those of unfortunate enough to be stuck in their path.

The thing about snowstorms is that just because it starts snowing, real life doesn’t stop. Hurricanes shut down entire areas. Only the absolute worst snowstorms do. When a snowstorm is on the way, most people I know just roll their eyes and say, “Yeah, so?”

People know that they’re still going to have to go to work, go to school, pick up their kids, and go grocery shopping. What they don’t tell you about snowstorms is how tedious driving becomes. What they don’t tell you is what it’s like to be in front of someone in a giant, over-wide pick up truck who thinks they know how to drive in a snowstorm or being stuck behind someone in a Cadillac with a Florida plates who you know can’t. They don’t tell you about driving down a normally busy and bustling street that is now abandoned. Instead of driving in the right lane, you’re driving down the center of this abandoned road so that if you do happen to spin out and fish-tail, you don’t end up in the ditch. If you’re smart, you’ll just stay at home and do the one thing you should be doing during a snowstorm.

Shovel your driveway and sidewalks. It’s really the only thing you should be doing. It’s also one of the biggest pains in the neck on God’s green (or white) earth. Your lower back is going to be sore from bending over low enough to get the shovel under all that snow. Your shoulders are going to be sore from pushing and lifting hundreds if not thousands of pounds of snow. Your legs are going to be tired from walking back and forth and from helping with the lifting. Then there’s the cold. Your face is going to be stinging from the frigid wind. Your cheeks are going to be red from it, giving you a new appreciation for what a certain jolly old man in a red suit has to endure to get his trademark rosy cheeks. Your hands and feet are going to be numb, making it difficult to grasp the shovel and making you dread the dull ache of blood returning to your extremities after you go back inside.

That’s if you get to go back inside. This is the worst thing about shoveling sidewalks and driveways- by the time you get done the first time, you have to start all over again. There’s nothing more disheartening than to finish the driveway, looking back to where you started, and see the driveway completely covered in snow. Philip Gerard doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says that it doesn’t stop. The snow doesn’t stop falling either, and that’s what they don’t tell you about snowstorms.

Sleep Timer: A Short Story

They lay in bed together. The room is dark except for the light from the television. The movie had just finished; the credits were rolling.

He knows he should get up, either to put a different movie in, or at least get the remote so they could watch TV. But he doesn’t want to let her go. She isn’t sleeping- he can tell by her breathing- so getting up wouldn't disturb her.

He had memorized how she breathed when she was sleeping. They spent the night together often, but they had never slept together. He was okay with that. He knew she wasn’t ready for that sort of step, even if she wanted to. That’s what he didn’t know; if she wanted to. That’s what he would think about at night while she slept in his arms and he watched her sleep and listened to her breathing.

That’s what he did most night when they were together. He’d watch her sleep and think and wonder how they got there and where he was going. He wasn’t sure what was going on between the two of them. He was, however, pretty sure that she didn’t know either. Sadly, he thought she preferred it that way.

She turns her head and twists her body a little to face him, the green comforter that’s covering them twists as it gets tangled in her clothes. He turns to face her, sitting up on his elbow. His clothes turn and twist under the blanket, becoming uncomfortable. He adjusts to make them comfortable again, and spreads the blanket smoothly over them.

She looks up at him and smiles. He loves it when she does that. It makes him feel good inside; warm. It makes him happy that she is happy. “That was a pretty good movie,” she says softly, stifling a small yawn, “I liked it.”

He smiles back, “I told you.” She reminds him of Penny Lane. There’s a dull ache that comes with the happiness, though. It comes from knowing that he wants more and makes it known. But it’s not reciprocated, not completely. He loves to see her happy and he does a lot of things in order to make her smile. He gets her little gifts sometimes, but never anything expensive; he knows it would make her uncomfortable. He calls her whenever he sees it snowing because he knows that she loves the snow, and he is always reminded of her when he watches the frozen flakes fall outside his window.

He even built her a snowman once. It wasn’t a very good one, nor was it very easy to build. The snow was light and fluffy. It took him forever to build each of the individual pieces. He had to do it without gloves, using body heat to melt the snow and make it stick. Each of the body balls was built in layers. The snowman wasn’t very big, a foot and a half tall at most, with Pepsi bottle caps for eyes and an old pen cap for a nose. He built it right outside her window. He felt like such a dork doing it since they weren’t together yet. He couldn’t help himself though, despite being worried about weirding her out rather than make her smile. He called it a Lloyd Dobbler moment.

She likes him too. She enjoys his company; she likes spending time with him. She knows he's a nice guy and would do almost anything for her. This makes her feel bad, because although she likes him too, she wouldn’t. She's told him this, too. She likes him enough to make sure he knows that while he 's rocketing at 100 miles an hour, she's idling at the starting line.

She wasn’t even sure why she was even at the race. It certainly wasn’t a friends-with-benefits thing. She wouldn’t do that. Neither would he; not with her. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t need to be with him, or any other guy for that matter, just to feel better about herself. It couldn’t possibly be her ex-boyfriend, could it? She refused to give him that much credit, though maybe he deserved it.

She’s a good person. She sees the good in other people. She sees the bad, too, but chooses to give them the benefit of the doubt. She’s fiercely loyal to those close to her, maybe to a fault. She’d been mostly lucky, that trust never seriously hurt her. Not until recently. She’d had to deal with things on her own, things she wasn’t used to dealing with. It was a hard and painful lesson. Now that she’d learned it, she was afraid of leaning on someone else the way others leaned on her. She didn’t want to learn those lessons again.

She knows he’s the same way. He’s very trusting. He also always assumes that everyone else is a nice as he is. Like her, he gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. Also like her, his openness has been taken advantage of. He’s unaffected by it, or at least he doesn’t show it. Maybe that’s why she’s with him. She thinks he hasn’t let the badness of the world wear him down.

The truth of the matter is he won’t let it. He used to be cynical and pessimistic, until he fell in love with a girl. Life became easier when he looked for the good. The girl broke is heart, and he was angry and bitter and cold for a while. But he realized staying that way took too much energy. He let it go. She hopes that someday, she can let it go too.

She can’t understand why he wants so badly to be with her. For him, if anything’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. It’s all or nothing; play hard or go home. She can appreciate that. She’s the same way. That’s what confuses her the most. He’s in it all the way, and she’s not. She can’t figure out why she’s different; why she’s special. She doesn’t know that to him, she just is.

She smiles at him again, arching her back a little bit, stretching. “It’s getting kind of late, but I’m not that tired yet.”

He looks over at the digital clock. The red LED says that it’s pushing . “We can watch another movie. I’ve got lots that you haven’t seen.” He hopes she’ll stay.

“She cranes her head back, looking at the clock herself, “It’s almost 10. I’ll probably fall asleep.”

“So? You know I like it when you stay over.”

She doesn’t respond. He knows he probably made her uncomfortable. Still, she doesn’t move to get up. He throws the comforter off. He wants to give her a quick kiss as he steps over her and off the bed, but decides against it, not wanting to make things worse for her.

He adjusts his khakis again. They got bundled up and uncomfortable while he was moving and getting up. He has two different DVD stands in his room. He walks over to the one behind his bed. Most of it is filled with TV seasons, “I still can’t believe you never heard of Firefly. Someday we’re going to block off an entire weekend and we’re watching it straight through.”

“You are such a dork.”

“Yes. Yes I am.”

There weren’t any movies worth watching on that rack, so he turned back to the DVD’s underneath his TV, “What about Brick? Or Garden State? Gross Pointe Blank?

“You pick. You’ve seen them. You know what’s good.”

“I don’t buy crappy movies.”

“Yeah? Is that The Girl Next Door?”

“Fair enough.”

He puts in and crawls back into the bed. He pulls the blanket back over them. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close, his chest against her back. He doesn’t know how much she likes it, but she doesn’t move away. She’d tell him if she didn’t, or more likely, just push him away.

He enjoys doing this, just holding her close. He kisses the back of her head, inhaling the sweet smell of her hair. She squeezes his arms tighter. He moves to her neck, taking in a full breath of her perfume. She pushes her head into his, moving him away from her neck, “It’s not happening.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come off like that.”

She smiles again, and his pulse quickens. She reaches up and strokes his cheek, then pulls his head to hers, kissing him. She enjoys it, but it’s a lot more passionate for him than it is for her. He runs his fingers through her hair and cups the side of her head in his hand, pulling her body close to him with the other. It won’t go past first base, but he doesn’t care. He thinks she’s beautiful, but it’s not a physical thing for him, not unless she wants it to be.

He feels something stirring inside. His heart starts beating even faster, and his legs get a little weak. He pulls away and looks into her blue eyes. He pushes her hair to the side. He caresses her angelic face. He shouldn’t do this. It isn’t fair to her. He knows what the situation is. She made it perfectly clear to him.

He doesn’t have much time left to bring her around. She’s graduating. He’s not. He doesn’t know where she’s going or what she’s going to do- she doesn’t either, really- but they both know it won’t be around here. She’s graduating only six months before he is, but he knows that they’ll never see each other again unless he can create something more permanent. He's not wild about something long distance, even over the short term, but he wants something. He knows he can’t create it by himself without help from her, but damn it if he isn’t going to try to convince her.

He feels awful about what he’s about to do. It’s not fair to her, knowing that she likes him, and knowing that she feels bad about not being able to give herself up to it like he has. It’s a selfish move on his part. He tells himself it has to be done, and it does. He wouldn’t be able to face himself in the mirror if he didn’t do this when he had the chance. He has to know that he tried everything.

“Are you okay?” she asks, a little concerned at the look of sorrowful determination on his face.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He pauses for a moment. “I’m going to say something to you right now, and you’re probably not going to like it.” Her brow furrows, she’s wondering what he’s going to say.

“I love you.”

Her face goes smooth, her eyes widening a little in shock. Even though the room is dark, the television gives off enough light for him to see that the color has drained from her face.

“I love you,” he repeats.

“What- I- you- hold on. You can’t possibly love me. You hardly know me.”

“I don’t need to know anymore. What I do know is that right here, right now, I love you. I’d step in front of a car for you.

“I… you must be confused.”

“I don’t think I am.”

“I don’t think you know what love is.” He blanches at the sting of the words; she regrets them as soon as she says them.

“I think I’m happier when you’re around. I think I’m a better person. You know how some people say that when you love somebody, all you want to do is nothing but be around them? Not me. You deserve someone who’s smart and knowledgeable and articulate and kind and giving and funny and-and-and just a good person. You deserve that person because you are that person. And I want to do everything I can to try and become him too. I’m a better person because of you. My life is better because you’re in it. It may not be the life long love you think it should be, because that kind of love requires two people, and try as I might, I can't love enough for the both of us. But don’t try to tell me I don't love you.”

“I-“ she stops and sighs, rubbing her eyes wearily. “I’m sorry.”

She rolls away from him so she can face the TV, but still lets him hold her, “Make sure you set the sleep timer.”

Syracuse Ink: Part One

What they say about tattoos is true- once you’ve got one; you want another, and another, and another. It’s been three years since my last one, and the desire never went away. What stopped me is that I wanted something creative and unique, but for the life of me, I couldn’t come up with an idea. I suppose it worked out better that way since tattoos are mad expensive.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my tattoos, but they’re very simple. They’re indicative of me and my personality, but only part of it. On my triceps are black fists. A friend of mine gives me shit about channeling rage Against the Machine. It’s not that far from the truth. They’re a symbol of strength and standing up for what you believe in. I suppose they’re my version of the barbed wire around the bicep.

Across my chest is “Me Numquam Infringes,” written in solid black, pseudo old English font. It’s Latin for “You will never break me.” I suppose it’s in the same vein as the fists, but I’m actually much more partial to the tattoo on my chest. I think most other people like it better too. I’ve certainly gotten more compliments on it.

But I wanted something different this time. I wanted something artistic and creative. Unfortunately, I am neither artistic, nor very creative, at least not outside of the realm of the written word. I wanted something with color. It took me a long time to have the epiphany of what I wanted.

The bug really bit me again in November. What set it off was simply seeing what I thought was an amazing tattoo that someone else had. I’m not sure if it’s possible for a still drawing to be graceful and elegant, but the simple yet beautiful tattoo of a bird was. Something just clicked in my head, and I wanted another tattoo, very badly. I started browsing BME, not necessarily looking for ideas, but hoping something would spark my imagination.

I love BME, short for Body Modification Ezine. It’s a website devoted to body mods in general. They’ve got pics of everything from piercings to tattoos to scarification. It’s a simple layout, with categories for different kinds of tattoos; old school, new school, sci-fi, faeries and angels, fantasy, geek, and political are just some of the different categories. Best of all about the site is it’s fast, it’s free, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of photos and stories. Unfortunately, the website hasn’t been updated since September, so I’m not sure what the status is.

I hadn’t been there in a while, so there was a lot of new stuff. At the time, there was probably some actual work that I should have been doing, like my TWS, possibly a paper for one of my other classes. But to hell with that. I was bitten and needed to come up with something. Normally I check out the lettering section first, since the written word is my comfort zone. Since I wasn’t looking for a purely text tattoo, I checked out the other sections first.

I could get an angel with wings spread across my shoulder blades, but that’s so been done. I have every intention of getting a back piece some day, but it’s going to be epic. With that much space to work with, I’m getting something grand. What I really want to do is go into tattoo parlor, throw down a couple thousand dollars on the counter and say, “I want a back piece. Go to town.” I bet some guys would love to have that opportunity.

So the angel on my back is a no go. I wasn’t feeling anything in the other sections either. Dragons have been done, and I’ve pretty much outgrown my AD&D geek years anyway. There’s nothing that was setting a spark. So I venture into the lettering section.

There’s a lot of cool work being done. There’s some fancy lettering that looks amazing in a few pics. A lot are just names of loved ones. There are some interesting quotes and epigraphs. Then I see a simple tattoo across the chest of a girl, very similar to mine, just below the collarbone. The tattoo itself is interesting enough. It says “First thought=Best thought.” That’s not what caught my eye, though. It was who the quote was (falsely, I know now) attributed to: Jack Kerouac.

Then it struck me. After three years, I finally had my epiphanic moment.

“But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, made to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see a blue centerlight pop and everyone goes ‘Aww!’”

That’s from On the Road. I didn’t want the whole passage, since it’s far too long, but it makes for an amazing visual. Suddenly, I knew what I wanted. I wanted the fireworks exploding across the night sky, with “The only people for me are the mad ones” underneath.

Once I figured out the idea, I had to figure out where I wanted it. My back was obviously out of the question. I contemplated putting it on a shoulder, but discarded that idea quickly. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, searching for a place to put the tattoo. It sounds cheesy as hell, but fuck it; it worked. I settled on my upper ribs on my left side. Placement might be tricky because of a birthmark, but it seems right.

Now I had to find someone to do it. I decided against going back to Ray at Halo in Liverpool. He did fine on my other two tattoos, but I didn’t like his style on more complex pieces. I wanted to go to someone who had positive referrals. My choices were a guy in Geneva, which I wasn’t to hot about driving to, or Taylor, from Halo on Erie Boulevard. I decided I would meet and talk with Taylor.

Part II:

The inside of Halo Tattoo on Erie Boulevard sort of reminds me of a southwest motif without all the trappings of trying too hard to have a southwestern motif. The walls are painted a pale golden yellow. There is short brown carpet covering the floor. It is one big open room, but the “lobby” is clearly designated with plastic chairs and white linoleum floors instead of carpet. Behind the front counter is a chalkboard with all the prices for different piercings, written in different colors of chalk. Also on the walls is flash art. Flash art never really interested me, but most of it is fun enough to look at. There are half walls that separate each artist’s work area. The half walls are covered with the same brown linoleum lop as the main counter.

Sitting on the half wall around Taylor’s area are two binders with pictures of his work. Since he’s busy working on another customer’s tattoo, Adam and I flip through them. I’m really impressed by his work. It looks amazing, especially a really large and intricate back piece that was in progress (yes, I’m totally obsessed with back pieces).

Adam introduces me to Taylor. He’s tall and skinny with dark hair. He looks a lot like Travis barker from Blink 182 if Travis wore the thick plastic rimmed glasses that one sees most punk, emo, and hardcore kids wearing. He’s wearing a long sleeved shirt that’s rolled up, exposing what must be full tattoo sleeves. I’m a little envious. It must be nice to be in a profession where it’s basically encouraged to have as many tattoos as possible. While he looks like your average tattoo artist, and I of all people should know that tattoo artists live normal lives, I couldn’t help but smile when he talked about the mundane events of “chilling with the wife” and buying Christmas presents for his dogs.

Taylor’s a nice guy. He asks me what I’m looking to get done, and I asked if he’d read On the Road, hoping that maybe, finally, someone would know what I’m talking about when I read the passage. He hadn’t, so I tried awkwardly to explain it.

I feel like such a huge dork pulling out my “reference materials” as Adam called them. In the pile of papers is a page of printed out Magic cards painted by Quinton Hoover, who’s style I really like and wanted emulated if at all possible. Yes, I used Magic cards. If I could give the finger over the internet to those of you laughing, I would.

I also brought in the full passage itself, which threw Taylor a little bit, “That’s a lot of text.” I tell him I’m not looking for the whole thing, just “The only ones for me are the mad ones.” Incidentally, I also brought that line printed out in the font that I wanted, Goudi Medieval for any fontophiles out there.

Also in the pile was a quick sketch to illustrate what I was looking for. I made it well known that I have no artistic ability whatsoever. I probably didn’t even need to verbalize it after showing my sketch. The drawing was just to show the general idea for the layout.

What impressed me the most about Taylor was his understanding of his craft. After showing him my sketch, he started offering ideas. “Have you thought about giving it sort of an ‘S’ shape, with maybe the main center light at the top and curving downwards?” I got a little confused and he does a quick, ten second sketch to show the shape. I don’t see how that works, so he uses the girl at the counter as a model. I ask him why he can’t just make my sketch look pretty and we could go with that. He says, rather bluntly, “Well, I could. But it’d look contrived and out of place.” I like him for that. He wants my tattoo to look good because it reflects on him as an artist.

He gives a quick lesson shape and human anatomy. From a profile view, the human torso has a gentle ‘S’ like curve. He explained that having the tattoo have the same shape, it would look more natural, and that if my body ever changed, like getting morbidly obese, it’d still look fine. Or as find as a tattoo can look after being stretched over 200 extra pounds, I suppose.

Shape isn’t something that I was totally oblivious to; I just hadn’t considered it for this tattoo. When I was talking to the desk guy when I was getting my first tattoo, I asked him about what general shapes go best on which body parts (inverted triangle on the upper back, etc). He just gave me a blank stare and said, “Dude, whatever you want, we can put it where ever you want.” The fact that Taylor took this sort of thing into consideration was a very pleasant surprise. Needless to say, he sold me on the idea.

After asking a few more questions about how I wanted it to look, I Taylor explained that he was leaving New Years Day for Arizona and wouldn’t be back for two weeks. That was fine for me, since I actually preferred to wait a couple of weeks to get it done. Now the two weeks is coming to a close.

Part three, wherein I actually get tattooed, will hopefully be next week’s entry.

Dear Mr. Crutcher

Dear Mr. Crutcher,

It’s 4:30 in the morning right now and I’m reading Whale Talk. It’s been a long time, years even, that I’ve stayed awake telling myself, “One more chapter.” Not even Harry Potter did it. And yet you’ve done it twice in a row with Deadline and Whale Talk. I’ll be perfectly honest- you’ve moved up in the ranks very quickly. In my eyes, you stand with Tim O’Brien and Hunter Thompson as my favorite authors. Good company, if I say so myself.

I’m 23 years old an in school studying adolescent education and English. I say this because when I tell people that I want to be an English teacher, the general reaction is surprise. Most people think I’m too cynical or jaded for the profession. I suppose that might be true that I’m jaded, but I don’t think it’s indicative of a fault. I’ve accepted that there are bad people and that bad things happen in the world, but that hasn’t stopped me from looking and hoping for the best in people. It’s the disappointment of these that lead to the matter of fact knowledge of bad people and bad things that I think people confuse for cynicism.

But I’m an idealist at heart, Mr. Crutcher, and I think you are too.

You take ideas that are complex, and you boil them down into their essence, and you do a very good job of it. You make it so that anyone can understand, especially kids, and in doing so paint them as ideals to strive for. You did it for acceptance of that which is different in The Sledding Hill. You did it for friendship in Whale Talk. And you did it for love in Deadline, which has one of the most amazing passages I’ve ever read, on par with Kerouac’s roman candles and Fitzgerald’s orgastic future: “I’m going to give you one free. Love, in the universal sense, is unconditional acceptance. In the individual sense, the one-on-one sense, try this: we can say we love each other if my life is better because you’re in it and your life is better because I’m in it. The intensity of the love is weighed by how much better.” I don’t fancy myself a writer, but if ever I can create something as beautiful as that, I’ll call myself a poet.

You also create characters that are real and flawed, but nevertheless they are inspirational (though I suppose they’d have to be flawed if they are to be changed by the end of the story, thus being inspirational). I’m not too far removed from high school, so I can be inspired and moved by your protagonists I hope someday I can be as fearless as Ben Wolf (though hopefully without the terminal illness). I hope I can be as strong a leader as T.J. Jones. Even your supporting characters draw the same response. I hope I can be as good a teacher as Ms Lloyd. I hope I can be as good a role model as Mr. Simet or Coach Banks. I hope that I can be as good a father as Mr. Jones.

In the end, I think your loftiest ideal is very simple, as good ideals tend to be: be good to each other. It’s one that I hold true, and hope I can live up to.

Sincerely
Mike