All I Wanna Do

I failed out of college. I failed hard, and it's interesting simply because it's not for any of the following reasons:

1. A boy
2. Partying too much
3. Mono

Those are three most common reasons freshman fail out of college. Not me though. No, I failed out for a more unique reason. Not a good reason, but better one than one of those three.

So I went crawling home, and not so promptly got a job, which I promptly got fired from (the mountain - if only I'd made it through college, perhaps I wouldn't end so many sentences with these damn prepositions).

Then I screwed around doing nothing and being sick. That took up the bulk of 1995. You were partying. I was taking steroids and having a physical therapist come to my house three times each week to help me re-learn how to walk. Good times.

Eventually I started easing back into life, and in 1996 I decided to start slow with an English course. It was a composition class at the local community college, and this kid Andy from high school was in it. We hadn't been friends in school, but we got along and talked sometimes during class breaks. One day Andy came to class and told me he'd just found out he had a tumor in his mouth, and then he never came back after that. This is the point in my blogging when I normally go Google someone, but I can't remember Andy's last name. It wasn't Rubin or Goldstein or Levy, the main last names of everyone in the jewish towns on Long Island. I think it started with a P, and ended with a "ski" or "sky" but I can't be sure.

My English teacher's name was Eugene, and we all laughed when he told us that. Something else he told us is that the first sentence has to grab people, has to make them want to keep reading. Go on - I know you're all scrolling up to re-read my first sentence. I'll wait. Hi. Yeah I know - it's not great, but it's not awful.

Sometimes on the walk to work I write first sentences in my mind. Sometimes even entire first paragraphs. Every so often I go crazy and create the first 30 seconds to two minutes of a movie, complete with set design, main characters, wardrobe, and soundtrack. Why yes, I *am* that fucking awesome. And then I go sit at a desk for seven and a half hours and do mundane tasks like arranging someone's itinerary for a flight from Oakland to Denver or entering two weeks worth of time.

Those first sentences? Some of them are really good. So are some of those first 30 seconds of movies. I wish I could give those to someone else, someone who can write and direct and produce. I'd hand them over as if I were cupping a faberge egg, and in my mind, it's always winter, snow is on the ground and steadily falling, we're outside, and when we breathe we can see it in the exhale.