Tag Archives: Growing Up

D E L space star dot star

Back in the early nineties, I was in the third or fourth grade, and my family got our first computer. It wasn’t new, it was something my uncle was getting rid of. It didn’t really do much. There was no mouse. I don’t even think it had Microsoft Windows. I’m actually trying to remember how we used it, but I don’t think anybody did. It kind of just sat there as we all stared at it, longingly.

“Please mom,” I’d beg my mother, “Can we play with the computer?” and I remember my mom would call up her brother as he took her on a step-by-step tutorial on how to launch the solitaire app. They didn’t call them apps back then, they called them games, not like solitaire was much of a game, really.

That machine lasted like a month or two until my parents decided that maybe home computing was the inevitability everyone kept promising it would be. They tossed my uncle’s hand-me-down in the trash and bought a real computer. This PC had Windows, some old version of it anyway, something named after a number, way before Windows 95. But even though it was brand new, it was still old. Or maybe I’m just remembering it as old, because everything was so much slower.

But it was pretty old. When you turned it on, you had to wait like ten minutes before it took you to the DOS prompt. And you’d have to actually enter computer commands, just like in a cheesy 80s movie. You’d write something like, “Computer, run Windows.” And then you’d have to wait another hour or so while the operating system loaded. When it was all said and done, finally you could use its state of the art graphic user interface to click on the window that said, “Games.” And yeah, it was mostly just solitaire.

But then a few years after that we got a real machine, a Gateway 2000. I can’t even conceive of how my mom went about buying the computer, because I think about how I’d buy a computer today: I’d go on the Internet and pick something out. But we didn’t have the Internet yet. Our current computer wasn’t capable of handling the web.

The Gateway was everything that I wanted a computer to be. It booted right to Windows, which was awesome, and it was Windows 95, which was even more awesome. Now I could finally play with that Windows 95 startup CD, the one that all of my friends talked about at school. It had the video to Weezer’s “Buddy Holly.” And there were games, actual games: Minesweeper, Chip’s Challenge, Ski Free.

Everything was right in the world. My life had finally started to feel like the future I’d always imagined for myself. We had the Internet. I had an AOL screen name. But there was a problem. Instead of throwing out the old computer like they did that antique passed down from my uncle, my parents just moved it to the other side of the room.

“Now we have two computers,” was the idea, but it was a flawed idea, because while technically, yes, they were both computers, only one of them had anything worth using. I’d be waiting for my brother to finish up on AOL so I could take a turn on the Internet. I’d complain that he was taking too long, “You can always use the other computer,” my mom would offer, which was a joke, because it didn’t have the Internet, it was totally useless.

The only one of us who used it was my brother Joe. He had some trial version of a shareware game that one of his classmates gave to him on a stupid floppy disc. And he’d pop it in and play the same minute and a half of sixteen-bit action, over and over and over again. “He likes it!” would be the reply if we complained about having to watch him loop through the same screen on repeat for hours.

And that’s how life went for a while, waiting for my brother to finish up with the computer so I could use it, picking up the phone line every once in a while so as to interrupt the Internet connection, waiting by the door as he tried futilely to reconnect through the never ending chorus of busy signals.

I remember around that time telling all of my computer woes to one of my dad’s cousins at a funeral. This was a guy that I’d never seen at any family parties. He lived far away or something, I don’t know his story, my dad has like a thousand family members. But this cousin, nobody else was talking to him, and once I had his ear about computers, man, I was locked into that conversation.

This guy knew everything about computers. “You know,” he gave me some advice regarding that old PC that took up space in the computer room, “You could always wipe the memory.”

“How would I do that?”

“Easy. You wait for the DOS prompt to load up, and you type in ‘del *.*’”

I remember exactly how he said it, “D-E-L space star dot star,” and I repeated it to myself over and over again for the rest of the night, making sure that I’d be able to commit it to memory.

But once I had it in there, I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Obviously I wanted to use it, to see if it would actually work. But destroying a computer? I wasn’t a bad kid or anything. Annoying, maybe, but not capable of actually ruining something big, like a computer.

I couldn’t get it out of my head though. I just kept hearing it on repeat in my head, del *.*. Part of me wished that my dad’s weird cousin never told me about the command in the first place. It started to encroach upon more and more of my daily thoughts. Sometimes I’d boot the machine up and start typing it out, not pressing enter, but holding my finger just above, not even an inch away. I felt powerful, with the tiniest of movements, I was capable of utter annihilation.

And then one day, I don’t know what came over me, but in a momentary lapse of judgment, I did it, I pulled the trigger. Del *.*, enter. And all of these characters started flying across the screen. The hard drive made audible clicking sounds, a sure enough sign that something was going on inside.

That’s when I regained my senses, realized exactly what I was doing. And I freaked out, I wanted to undo it. I pulled the plug, hoped that if I just gave it a minute, we could forget anything had happened, let bygones be bygones. But it was too late. While the power light showed signs of electric current, there was nothing on the screen, no signs of computing activity whatsoever.

So I turned it off and left the room. A few days later, I heard Joseph ask my mom to help him with something on the computer, “my computer,” as he was fond of calling it, seeing as how he was the only one who used it at all. A little while after that, my mom asked me if I knew what was wrong. “With the computer?” I pretended to act all shocked, running to the new computer, making up what I thought was an elaborate ruse, like I didn’t even know about the old computer.

“Oh, the old one?” I acted relieved after my mom told me what she meant. “I have no idea. I never use that thing.”

And that was that. It sat there for a few months, and then one day my dad hauled it outside and left it on the curb for trash pickup. I’ve always felt bad about it, lying to my parents, ruining the computer that for some reason brought my little brother such a simple joy. I guess, mom, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry? Is that good enough? I’m sorry I broke the old computer, on purpose. But mostly I’d like to blame my dad’s cousin, because why would you think it was a good idea to give a little kid his own computer self-destruct button? Not cool man, you might as well have given me a knife, or a bottle of spray paint, with strict instructions never to use them. Of course I’m going to use them. Don’t you know anything about little kids? So if anything, it’s really that guy’s fault, not my fault. Thanks for ruining my little brother’s computer.

Weezer – The Blue Album: A near-perfect musical experience

I was just dicking around on reddit for a while when I came across this question posited on /r/AskReddit: What is an album that you enjoy every song on? In case you’re fortunate enough not to be totally enthralled to the ultimate eraser of time that is reddit, /r/AskReddit is pretty self-explanatory. Someone asks a question, and everybody else in the world throws in an answer.

It was late, I didn’t really feel like getting too lost on reddit before bed, and this question was floating right at the top of the front page. I almost didn’t feel like checking it out. There were already something like twenty thousand responses, and so what would be the point? I might as well just run a Google search of twenty thousand random popular albums.

And besides, I always get somewhat annoyed when I listen to other people opine about music. Tastes are so subjective. One person’s Pink Floyd may very well be another’s Justin Bieber, and when topics regarding musical preference explode like this on the Internet, there’s a tendency for discussion to devolve into name-calling and least common denominators.

Still, I clicked, despite my attempts to maybe go to bed like a regular human being, I always wind up clicking. And the top comment was Weezer: The Blue Album. And all of that internal debate, that voice inside always arguing that you can’t really pick a favorite music, a favorite anything, that while something might sound great one day, it might not do anything for you next month, or ten years from now, all of that went away.

Because right there, that very top comment nailed it. Of course it’s The Blue Album. I enjoy all ten of those tracks. It’s probably as close to perfection that the medium of an album is capable of achieving. From “My Name is Jonas” all the way to “Only in Dreams,” there’s not a bad track, not even a bad note really.

I remember when I was in like fourth or fifth grade, I had this tiny little boom box, a CD player with only three or four CDs to play on it. When I wanted new music, I had no other choice than to listen to FM radio. It was around that time that Weezer’s first single, “Buddy Holly” got really popular on the top forty stations.

Buying actual CDs was like a once a year thing for me, and so I don’t know if it was an actual love of “Buddy Holly” or just pure chance that led me to pick out The Blue Album when the opportunity for a new CD actually arose. But throughout the rest of my childhood, all the way through grammar school to high school, I played that CD cover to cover and none of the songs ever got old.

I always hate it when people ask me what my favorite song is, as if I could pick just one song out of my collection of music to rank number one. I hate it for like a minute before I remember, wait a second, “Say it Ain’t So,” that’s my favorite song. And I don’t think I’m alone here, like this is any unique opinion. It’s a lot of people’s favorite song.

One time when I was in high school, I went to this show a few towns over, a bunch of local ska and punk bands playing at one of these all day gigs. There was this one band, right in the middle of their set, something messed up with the audio, the mics got cut but the rest of the instruments were working fine.

They tried to fix the problem, but it wasn’t happening right away, and the crowd was starting to get a little restless. After a few long minutes, the guitarist started strumming the first few bars of “Say it Ain’t So.” And everyone went nuts. The drummer joined in, so did the bassist, and from that very first, “Oh ye-eah …” the entire audience sang together in unison.

Word for word we belted out the lyrics, I’m getting goose bumps just thinking about it now, this one song, such a musical representation of how I feel when I remember growing up, the music I listened to, the same songs that gave a lot of people my age those same first feelings, like wow, I never thought music could sound this good, feel this cool. This band recorded such a great song as probably the climax to one of the most incredible records of my generation.

Part of my brain is telling me that I’m getting a little carried away, that whenever I start writing about how amazing something is – did I really just call it the record of my generation? – that maybe I need to scale back the tone just a little.

So I clicked play on iTunes, and now I’m feeling it again, and no, I’m not exaggerating, this song is definitely amazing. It’s totally what inspired me to buy a guitar in the ninth grade and to start taking lessons. I remember it was like two or three weeks in with my guitar teacher, he was trying to teach me how to read music and learn the fundamentals, I was just like, hey, I need you to teach me how to play this song. And so he wrote it out for me, note for note in my cheapo blue notebook I bought for guitar lessons. It took me like a year to get it down, and for many years after it was really the only song I felt comfortable playing in its entirety.

I feel ridiculous cheesy saying this, but I owe so much to that song, to The Blue Album. I’m able to listen to it today and be transported back to those endless high school days, sitting around in my room, playing video games, bored out of my mind, no real responsibilities at all. I could listen to a CD and lie on my bed and not have to think about anything at all. I didn’t get bent out of shape about wasting time or not being productive. I could just concentrate on how awesome this music is, ten timeless tracks of pure bliss.

Sleeve me alone

As the oldest of six, one of my favorite pastimes growing up was tormenting my younger brothers and sisters. Obviously I can’t get away with any of this stuff as an adult. Not as much anyway. It’s one thing for a bunch of little kids to run around the house screaming and crying, but when I try pulling any of these stunts now, things can get heated, nothing ever ends well.

But I was just thinking about this one incident, I was maybe twelve or thirteen, there was nothing going on at home and so, bored out of my mind, I focused all of my attention toward my little sister Emily. For something like five years straight, she would watch Disney’s Beauty and the Beast on VHS, over and over again, to the point where one of the tapes actually had to be replaced due to excessive playback.

So I started teasing Emily. Over what? I have no idea. It was the kind of incessant poking and prodding that, regardless of how patient a little kid might try to be, I was more patient, I’d sit there all afternoon, repeating word for word the lines from the movie, but in a really annoying voice. Or even worse, I’d start reciting the dialogue thirty seconds or so before it played on TV. Like I said, this movie pretty much ran nonstop on our TV, so like it or not, I have the entire film committed to memory.

It didn’t take long. Emily started fighting back, “Stop it Robbie, sto-op it!” which was all I needed to let me know that it was working, that maybe things might escalate to the point where my mom would get so annoyed with all of our fighting that she’d turn the TV off completely, uninterested in hearing anybody’s arguments as to who started what.

But what happened next, I couldn’t have anticipated, a gift from the heavens bestowed upon me through the desperate whines of my sister. She blurted out, “Leave me alone!” Only, the way she said it, she must have misspoken somewhat, because it didn’t come out like, “Leave me alone,” it sounded as if she said, “Sleeve me alone!”

You might think that a minor mispronunciation isn’t really anything to laugh about, let alone something to use as the basis for a never ending series of taunts, but in my family, even the slightest slipup was considered fair game for a merciless assault.

So now I had an entirely new avenue of attack, and just in time too, because I would have eventually grown pretty bored of just repeating Beauty and the Beast. But now, sleeve me alone, this new material was enough to sustain me for a whole day, weeks even. I mean, I’m still talking about it, so it never really wore out, not like the tape on that busted VHS Beauty and the Beast. Seriously, how do you watch a movie that many times?

It wasn’t long before I recruited the rest of my brothers and sisters, a very are team-up, the setting aside of our individual differences to make life acutely miserable for just one. Thanks to our collaborate taunting, pretty soon Emily was reduced to tears, curled up in the fetal position on the living room floor, while the five of us marched around her in a circle, chanting in unison, “Sleeve me alone! Sleeve me alone!”

Like I said, it stayed fresh for a good while. It’s not even totally out of the question for a sleeve me alone chant to start up today, we’ll all be hanging out at our parents’ house, there will be a lull in whatever conversation we’re having, and someone might bring it up, totally unprompted, “Sleeve me alone!” and we’ll all start chanting.

Actually, I started this whole piece out flooded by the comforting nostalgia of childhood memories, but now that I’ve typed this whole thing out, now that I’ve read it back to myself, this is actually all pretty mean stuff. Jesus, what was wrong with me that I found such delight in making my younger sister so miserable? Why does that memory still make me feel kind of happy? Am I like a sociopath or something?

Six kids and one Nintendo

Growing up it was always this battle to play video games, to get some quality time with the Nintendo without one of my brothers or sisters spoiling my fun. I’m the oldest of six, we’re all really close in age, it wasn’t like I was in charge of the Nintendo, and so everybody wanted to play. We had one TV, one console, and they were shared property.

There was really only one rule that governed our video game play, and that was the principle of mutually assured destruction. Regardless of who happened to be using the Nintendo, if one of us started complaining to my mom or dad, the result was always as swift as it was consistent: “That’s it. Turn off the TV. Turn off the Nintendo.”

And if I was playing, I’d maybe start in on a defense, like, “But mom! Come on! I was playing first! I had the controller! I was playing a one-player game! Come on mom! That’s not fair! Mo-om! Come on!”

I’m talking here as if I was the victim. More than likely I was the one who got bored, decided to see what was going on in the living room, I’d find one of my brothers playing some video game, and just because of the fact that I was a huge asshole, I’d start being a jerk. “Move over, we’re playing two player.”

It was a cheap move, yeah, but that was the system by which we self-governed our Nintendo use. The rule was, as laid down by our parents, if you want to play Nintendo, and someone else wants to play Nintendo, then move over and play something that’s two-player, because it’s not your Nintendo, and if you resist, if you have to get mom and dad involved, that’s going to be the end of it.

My mom would be like, “Look, if you kids are going to fight about the Nintendo, nobody’s going to play. You want to keep fighting? I’ll throw that Nintendo in the trash. You want to try me?”

That always shut any of us up. Because even though I kind of doubted my parents’ willingness to trash something that they bought, a piece of electronics that they spent over a hundred dollars for, I never wanted to take the chance. There was always this story that my dad told about how when he was a little kid, one time he and his brothers and sisters, had so annoyed my grandmother that she cut the chord to the TV with a pair of scissors.

I mean, no, I was never really afraid that the TV would get trashed. Take away the Nintendo, maybe, but no TV? That would have been hell for my mom, having us all cooped up inside the house, no Saved By the Bell to keep us somewhat quiet.

Because that’s what we did, we watched TV and played Nintendo. We had several games, we’d get them for Christmas or, sometimes at the end of the school year we’d be surprised with a new one. I remember when I convinced my mom to buy us The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It was awesome. For months I had read in Nintendo Power magazine about all of the different dungeons that I’d have to explore, all of the various weaponry at my disposal.

This Zelda game though, it was a double-edged sword. As a one-player game, one that I really, really wanted to play, like all of the time, it meant that the rest of my brothers and sisters now wielded an inordinate amount of power over me. Any time I sat there playing Zelda, all one of them had to do was open his or her mouth and say loud enough for my mom to hear, “Hey Robbie, can I play?”

To make matters worse, this game came with only three save files. Granted, only three of us barely had the hand-eye coordination necessary to actually play this game, but try being a ten year old kid and attempting to explain this argument to your mom and dad. Halfway through the first sentence, I can already imagine my parents shaking their heads, saying to themselves, I knew we shouldn’t have bought that Zelda. Maybe there’s still time to return it for one of those baby educational Fisher-Price two-player games. We actually had one of those for regular Nintendo. It was the equivalent of Barney & Friends for video games.

And so yeah, I complain about never really getting much quality time alone with the Nintendo, but if I really take a look in the mirror, I know that it was mostly my own fault. I’m the oldest, and I had a hand in crafting the tactic of mutually assured destruction. I’d be doing something else, I’d get bored, and I’d walk into the TV room to find one of my brothers minding his own business playing a video game.

“All right,” I’d say with a shit-eating smile, “Let’s play two-player.” And if my brother started to object, I’d say in a really low voice, “Moo-oom.” Then we’d both be sitting there playing two-player Tetris, neither one of us really interested in falling bricks, but both of us too stubborn to leave the TV alone. So we’d sit like that for hours, every time I scored a line I’d do this overblown celebration, “Yes!” just to rub it in his face.

Man, I was such an asshole.

Easter + Sunday = weekend – fun / (jelly beans * Peeps)

Happy Easter everybody! I’m trying to come up with something inspired by the holiday, but I’ve got nothing. I don’t think it’s my fault. I think it’s Easter’s fault. Seriously, what self-respecting holiday chooses to be celebrated on a Sunday? That’s already a day off. What’s wrong with Monday? Or Tuesday? No, you wouldn’t want everybody to have an extra vacation day. Thanks for nothing, Easter.

“But Rob,” I can just hear Easter protesting, “What about Holy Week? What about Good Friday? Holy Thursday? Spy Wednesday? Holy Tuesday?” Shut up Easter, you know as well as I do that none of those count as real holidays, not outside of Catholic school, not according to my bosses anyway, nor most employers around the country. Certainly the federal government doesn’t grant any time off for Holy Week, so I’m saying nice try.

Come on. No gifts? Candy? Please, that’s not a present, that’s a reward for having to spend the whole day grocery shopping with your mom. She buys you some candy for being well behaved, or as close to well behaved as you can manage, trying not to get all excited, whining, antsy just thinking about that candy by the check out, maybe some Twizzlers, a Twix bar.

Peeps? That’s not a candy. It’s a marshmallow. And a poor excuse for a marshmallow at that. I swear, I’ve been chewing on the same Peep for the better part of five years now. I have to take it out of my mouth obviously, you know to go to work and stuff, to brush my teeth, but I will not be outsmarted by a baby-chicken-shaped seasonal piece of postwar confectionary culture.

“Oh Rob! Stop being so contrary! Easter candy is delicious! Like those Cadbury eggs, you know not the big gross ones filled with that inedible goo, but the mini-eggs, the chocolate ones that come in the purple bag! Those are delicious!” Yes, fine, those are delicious. But what is it, really? It’s an oval piece of chocolate covered in hard sugar. That’s it! That’s not that special. Is that the best you can do Easter?

One time when we were all little kids my family won a fifty-pound solid chocolate Easter bunny from some bakery in town. Technically, my brother Kevin was the winner, but not really. Ever since Kevin won a pretty sizeable jackpot at the races a few summers before (don’t ask) my parents decided that he was the “luckiest” child. Which is not true at all. I’m the luckiest! Me! My parents were amused at seeing me react with such insane jealousy that the lucky moniker stuck. I think I was with my mom when she filled out the raffle at that bakery: “Let me put down Kevin’s name. He’s the lucky one!”

I’m the lucky one! Anyway, a few weeks later:

Ring! Ring!

“Hello, is Kevin there?”

“Who’s calling please?”

“Itgen’s Bakery.”

“Hold on.”

“Kevin!’

“What?”

“Phone!”

“Hello?”

“Kevin?”

“Yes?”

“When do you want to pick up your giant chocolate bunny?”

“Mom! Mom! Mo-om!”

What a scam. I couldn’t imagine a giant chocolate bunny would actually make Easter worse, but it did, because the Easter bunny must have thought, well, those kids sure have a lot of chocolate already, I might as well skimp on the Easter baskets and just put out a supplemental bowl of jelly beans. That’s more than enough, really.

And then all of our cousins came over and my mom started hacking away at the chocolate, giant chunks of it everywhere. “Please!” my mom was telling everybody, “Take some chocolate home. Get this stuff out of my house!”

And I was like, “What? No way! That’s our chocolate!” and I put up a big baby tantrum, and everybody was fighting, all while my brother Kevin shouted in the background, “It’s not your chocolate it’s my chocolate!” and I’d be like, “Shut up Kevin! I’ll eat all of that chocolate right now!”

“Mo-o-o-om!”

What a bust. Even after my cousins stole the majority to bring back to their houses, there was still way, like way too much chocolate for any of us to know what to do with. After a week it started developing a white filmy layer on top. It was gross in the same way Halloween candy gets gross by December. Fucking Itgen’s. Fucking Kevin. Fucking Easter.

Now I’m an adult, and all Easter does is rob a day off and turn it into a non-day off. I guess. Not really. I work Sunday nights anyway, waiting tables. I tried to get off but I knew that was never going to happen. Who wants to work on Easter Sunday? Who wants to work any Sunday? Sunday is the craziest day at any restaurant. It’s a day for crazy people to go out to eat. Easter Sunday? Even crazier people. Maybe I’ll be in a really bad mood all night. Maybe I’ll get fired. Fucking Easter.