Me (part 4 now? Good Grief!)

I finished my last day of 6th grade at Ridgecrest elementary with I fight. There was this kid there that I was kinda' friends with, but he kind of annoyed me. We've all had those friends... I brought my skateboard to school and he said "Wouldn't it be cool if you could velcro your shoes to your board." I knew what he meant, but he'd been bugging me for the last few months, and I already knew that I could push his buttons and that I could beat him. So I said "____ that's dumb, and you're stupid." He took the bait and we had a fight. Like I said, I already knew I could beat him... I learned a lot being a white kid in the projects, foremost is don't fight with a kid you can't beat. Or his friends! Anyway, principals office on the last day! "Waddya gonna do boss? Send me home now? Ok!" I never said any of that to the principal's face, but that's what I was thinking, and I'm pretty sure he knew it and still couldn't do anything... He sent me back to class. Damn. =)

So we (Heidi and I) packed up (I actually had to make my bed at Grandma's, so I did it one last time), and went back to live with Dad and Toni up in Marysille, WA, the "Ville." That summer was the most boring summer of my life. We had just moved and I had moved so many times that I had given up on making friends, and I was a 7th grader. 7th graders are mutants. So I was a mutant in a new place with new social rules (again). I found the library, read a lot, rode my bike a lot, and found a creek to go wet my feet in. By September, I was a little more prepared for the middle school experience than I was the first two weeks of school in 6th grade (at the same school). Worst of all... Those glasses. -----> The haircut is only horrid now, it was in style in the Ville back then (doesn't mean it SHOULD have been, but it was), but the glasses. Oyve. Thanks Heidi for posting that on the Facebooks... I am comfortable nothing else like that will show up these days...

So 7th grade started a more normal part of life for me and Heidi. Dad and Toni were a little more prepared to be responsible parents. They were buying a house now, they were engaged (it didn't happen until that dorky ass kid was 17, but it was a little more serious now), they had steady work. In short, they saw the writing on the wall, and grew up (assisted by the motivation that Grandma and Grandpa were the mortgage holders on their house, and could essentially make their lives pretty crappy. Some people need a little more help, i.e., coercion, to grow up). That doesn't mean there wasn't still lots of problems... I'm a smart kid. The experiences I had prior to 7th grade forced me to be more mature than most 12 year olds, and the way I dealt with it, if I may be a bit of a trumpet player for a second (meaning I'm pretty proud of it), was better than the vast majority of other 12 year olds. I'm saying this because Dad's general philosophy of parenting at the time was this: "Tyson, don't do that." Me: "Why? You do?" Dad: "Do as I say, not as I do." Me: "That's no fair, and it's not right." Dad: "I'm the parent, I'll tell you what's right. Don't do that." Usually he got pretty angry when this conversation and it's thousands of variations happened, and I'm sure there are a lot of Heidi's colleagues out there that would poop bricks if they saw him in action back then, but here's the background. Before I moved to Chicago, Dad and I went fishing for a weekend and had a heart to heart (he fell out of the boat into alpine lake water too, that was Freaking. Hilarious.). He confessed to me that he screwed a lot of stuff up as a parent, including in Marysville. In his head, he was doing for me what he wanted for himself as a teenager, boundaries, structure, discipline, and a swift kick in the ass to get him motivated. What I got out of that was that he thought he was raising himself. Remember that point, "raising himself," we'll come back to that... I want to also be crystal clear that he never resorted to any physical abuse. Ever. A wise person once told me that all parents do the best they can at any given time. That doesn't mean it's good. It simply means that was the best they were capable of at the time. Dad and I are actually pretty close now. I'll leave that for another post (blog, whatever) another day...

Remember I said something about Dad thinking he was raising himself? Well, Toni did that too. She superimposed how she behaved as a child/teenager on Heidi. Now, Heidi, that's your story and I don't want to steal your thunder if you get to the point where you write your story, but I do need to say that this, eventually, did not work out well.

So through these secondary school years, things were mostly normal. Yeah Dad was overzealous and yeah Toni felt jealous of her step-daugher, but they cared and did the best they could at the time. They were focused more on being parents than they were in Richmond Beach, and they were getting better at it. As an adult, I especially feel for Toni. She never had children of her own and to this day, I don't think she understands the care that's necessary from day 1. I'm not supposed to have that sort of knowledge that one of my parents does. It doesn't seem right... But it is what it is. Toni got us when I was 10 and Heidi 5 and these days, she doesn't really know what to do with Sam when we're up there.

So I'm going to get back to the bio part of this bio... About this time, let's go ahead and say 8th grade now... I started to really get into band. It was close though! I spent the summer of 7th grade with my Dad's cousin Andy at a horse training ranch in Monroe. It was fun, I got pretty strong (for a scrawny 12 year old), I got paid for cleaning horse stalls, and I could have easily slipped into that scene. Something else came up though...I'll get there in a paragraph or two. Most of the popular kids in band were figuring out it was hard to be good and dropping out for easier things like sports. I got new glasses (and then broke 'em goofing around in PE and had to wear prescription sunglasses for the next two years, but they were still better than that damn picture!) and I started actually meeting people in all my new normal activities. In particular there was Boy Scouts... I didn't really make many friends in my troop, but I do remember seeing another new kid (this was back in 7th) at Marysville Middle school with one of those red wool boy scout coats. I asked him what troop he was in and was he new at MMS. He was new, and his old troop was in Everett. His name was Lonnie. We actually were Beavis and Butthead. It was that bad. I think this is going to turn into a part 5...jeebus...So much happened before Lonnie and I started causing trouble, mostly for ourselves...

The summer after 8th grade Heidi and I spent a few weeks with Mom. She had been living with my Uncle Tony and Aunt Tonja. They were keeping Mom on the straight and narrow. They had (have actually, it's still there) a "cabin" on Anderson island. It's in quotes because it was a brand spanky new house on a lake. Frikkin' Rad. Mom took us out there. This my first summer of "Oh! Girls! WOAH GIRLS ARE COOL." It was about that bad. I think I was getting more normal. Except for those damn sunglasses...

In 9th grade I broke my glasses for team try outs for baseball when I threw off the catchers mask. I didn't make the team because I missed a day of try-outs. That got Dad motivated to FINALLY get me contacts. After two years of being called "shades" by everyone in the damn school. That was attention no middle school kid EVER wants. That year, I also discovered Drum & Bugle Corps. Now it was on. I found what I was going to do. The Seattle Cascades was when I discovered what I wanted to do in life. Lucky for me, I was 14 when i found it. I remember my first camp at the Bingo hall in Shoreline. The building housed about 150 old people that smoked like chimney's that were on fire every weeknight, and then we went in on the weekends to play brass instruments. Nice. As and adult and music educator I look back on this and say WTF WERE YOU THINKING to the adults that were leading the group. I also remember an instructor telling us we were going to learn to march backwards. I said "why do we need to march backwards?" He got this look of "Oh shit, what have I gotten myself into by taking this job." That was good times! Seattle Cascades 1993 "Showboat!"

I'm getting into the normal stuff now, so it's probably not as interesting =) I don't care! It was my life and I'm writing it for myself and my kids! I have to keep that in mind so I don't make my autobiography into a crappy soap opera... My recollections of my life. It's also easier to joke about and make fun of when it's not so damn serious! I said I wasn't going to write a book...I think I did lie. Next stop, high school... ah crap... Girls. =)