it's one of those weepy nostalgic days today. haven't been able to shake the weepy nostalgia. jimmy came up to me at lunch and asked if i was okay. i basically said don't you wish things were simple like they USED to be, jim? he basically walked away with a quickness. if he stayed, and we entered into an open and honest exchange, a frank back and forth concerning what we had but failed to properly APPRECIATE, these are some of the things i would lay on him. in an open, honest, frank manner.

the thermos of hot chocolate my mom gave me on the winter mornings i went to work with my dad. some kids had paper routes for pocket money, some kids had rich parents who gave them whatever money they needed, i had weekend mornings at my dad's and OCCASIONALLY a few hours before school. in the more temperate months, not a big deal, just awake when no one in their right mind would be. but in the winter, holy christ, it was awful. cold and dark and inhumane. my dad would say, just think of all the money, and i'd say all the money? you're giving me five dollars an hour. he'd say it's more than i got at your age. and tempers would flare (it was four in the fucking morning). my mom began 'mitigating' my woes with thermoses of hot chocolate. which did in fact mitigate a great deal, but never to the point where i didn't mind being one of only two people awake in the world. the first time i got one, my dad made me share it with him. i got him back by telling mom as soon as i got home that i had to give half to the old man. oooh, did he ever get in trouble. oooh, was i ever grinning at him at the dinner table. oooh.

galoshes. did you have those big galoshes, the dark green kind with hooks for fasteners? and if you did, were your galoshes too tight so you had to put your feet in bread bags to get 'em in the galoshes? i hated those things. man oh man. PLUS, i got made fun of a lot at school for them, you know when you take 'em off and other kids see the bread bags on your feet, then it's open season on the dork. (said dork was me.) freshman year in high school, i got sick of kids laughing, so i talked back, then this one kid hit me, i hit him back, we started fighting, this one priest came over and thought i'd started it, and when i told him he needed to get his eyes checked, he slapped me hard in the face. (the next year he did have glasses but that's beside the point.) the POINT is i now recall those galoshes fondly. especially today when my toes are cold and a little bit wet cause i slopped into a snowbank this morning getting into my car. the other point is i will get that priest. maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday. slap me in the face when i didn't even start it. i know where he is. he's in a cushy suburban parish now, complacent and fat and lah-de-dah, thinking he's got it made in the shade. he has no idea. none.

brussels sprouts. christ almighty, the brussels sprouts i had to choke down just to get either away from the dinner table or on to the dessert that everyone else was enjoying. and you had to be quick, choke 'em right down, or my dad would eat your dessert. (glen the little dickhead mama's boy made a big thing of how he ate his vegetables, no matter what vegetable was the vegetable du jour. 'look at MY plate, mom, there are no brussels sprouts on MY plate, mom.' the brown-nose kiss-ass.) she didn't do anything but boil the shit outta them, the brussels sprouts, then butter and salt all over the place. now that i like brussels sprouts, i regret the number of dinners ruined/dragged out for hours and desserts lost to my dad's quick fork. oh, and also, i was never a big fan of cauliflower, but he sure as shit was, which meant cauliflower once a week. i still don't like cauliflower, though, so non, je ne regrette rien on the cauliflower front.

my bedroom. specifically, the one in the house off leavitt. now THAT was a bedroom. there were great long stretches as a child when i more or less had no friends (shocking, i know, but sadly too true), and my parents would wonder, what the hell's wrong with you why do you have no friends, and i would shrug i dunno, i just don't. so i spent a lotta time in my bedroom. it had a star wars poster, a red white and blue dresser, a small rug with the logos of every baseball team, a shelf of those scholastic books you sent away for, two little league trophies and matchbox and hot wheels cars EVERYWHERE. oh, and han solo and boba fett action figures. i used to make them fight. whenever it seemed as though boba fett would win, han solo would call upon his inner reserve, his true mettle, then beat the shit outta boba fett, who would escape to fight another day, stunned and tail tween his legs back to his secret lair, which was under my bed.

my grandparents' cabin in northern wisconsin. it was middle of nowhere, the nearest town was rhinelander, it was on a lake, and there was swimming and fishing and a tavern up the hill a bit that did hot sandwiches and beer and had a pinball machine (first time i ever got schnockered was that tavern right there. i should find it and thank it, shake its hand). we spent two weeks every summer there. my uncle took me out fishing once, with a baseball bat in the boat. he wouldn't answer when i asked what kinda fish had to be subdued by a bat. the answer, as i soon found out, was one very angry muskie.

my maternal grandparents. my dad's parents were good, i liked them just fine, but they didn't play cards like my MOM'S parents did. they didn't give me five dollars to spend at the tavern like my MOM'S parents did. they didn't teach me a proper wisconsin fish fry like my MOM'S parents did. i drove past their house last summer, the first time i'd seen it in years. it looked exactly the same, which was a comfort, except for there was now a swing set in the yard between the house and the garage.

the first car i ever had. a datsun two-door, and i was seventeen. it was grandma's car, dad's mom's, her florida car, i bought it for two hundred bucks (money i'd saved from working at dad's), drove it back to chicago in november and by december it was clear this datsun was not cut out for chicago winters. it froze solid, basically, an ice cube as soon as the mercury dropped to twenty, no one could ever get the heat to work, it was light in back so it slid all over the place. once i had to slam on the brakes on lake shore drive, wound up doing more than a three sixty, right at the curve on the north part of the loop, by oak street beach, and wound up stalled and pointed the wrong way, basically facing the oncoming traffic. how i didn't get killed is anyone's guess. a couple close calls there. much swerving, dodging, screeching and honking. much.

homework. hated school, hated teachers, hated book reports, hated the questions at the end of every chapter, hated projects, hated term papers, hated listening, hated thinking, hated taking notes, hated everything but study hall and lunch and gym class when the sport we were playing didn't involve me getting the shit beat outta my person. but now ... i gotta admit, the thought of an hour or two of homework in the evening is not without its charms. (by the way, the only reason i have a high school diploma is cause i am kinda smart and was able to half-ass my way to a C and the occasional B. the only reason i have a college degree is my boards were very very high, and i settled for a state school, and not even one of the good state schools, one of the not-good ones.)

my friend jocko. everyone has a friend who died, this story is in no way unique (there is a certain someone here at the restaurant who can't go five minutes without mentioning that years ago, his friend was murdered ...), BUT, that being SAID, i had a friend named jocko and he was working as a gas station attendant/cashier. one night someone came in, shot him in the back three times, stole whatever was in the register and he died. jocko's mom and sister both went a little crazy, jocko's dad became even more stoic or remote or withdrawn and the killer was never found. for a while i felt like shit cause jocko called me a week before, left a message but i was too busy to call him back. a total cliche, that guilt, but there you have it.

the funniest thing jocko ever did was make an audio tape of him silently drinking a six pack. it was side A of a ninety minute tape. he sent it to me in college with no letter of explanation, no label on the tape. i played it and at first couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. all i heard was burps and slurps and gulps and the pffsshhes of beer cans opening. by the end, i thought i had it figured out. i called a few friends over, they knew who jocko was, i played it for them, they all agreed that had to be what it was. then someone (it wasn't me) got the bright idea of recording us listening to the tape then sending that recording back to jocko. so he got a forty five minute tape of drunk or high assholes giggling, mumbling and relishing it. he sent us back a tape of him drinking a six pack while listening to us listening to him, you could hear us faintly in the background, but the foreground was only his burps and slurps and gulps and the pffsshhes. at the end of the tape, he said 'that was a six of beast' (meaning milwaukee's best). the tape went back and forth a few more times and was in his possession when he died.