The early years

It sounded like a good idea at that time but isn't that how all great stories start. No one ever starts a story like "I heard what my buddy was saying but deep down I knew I shouldn't go, so I stayed home" or "my parents would be ticked if they found out so I better not go". No, all great stories start the same with a phrase like "it sounded like a good idea at the time" or "I didn't think we would get caught". My life is full of these phrases, stories, and mischief and I wouldn't change it.

My stories start around the age of 13 or so. Before that I was a great upstanding Mormon youth always going to my church meetings and attending all of my school classes. School came hard for me but I liked going because of recess. I didn't work hard at school which is probably why it wasn't easy for me. Most of my teachers left comments for my parents saying that I was too talkative in class and I was forever being told to turn around and stop talking. I made it through elementary school without too much damage which wasn't easy given the way I looked. I see pictures of myself from my early years and think that it is great that you don't worry about looks when you are that young because I was no model. I had ruddy skin with a lot of freckles. My hair was brown and really thick so it didn't lay down like the other kids, in fact it stood straight up. I guess that is why I kept it shaved for along time. I did grow it out so I could put a part in it while I was in grade school but that looked really dorky. Also when I was in sixth grade my dad gave me a Mohawk that was fairly long. He shaved both sides of my head and left the top down the middle. He also cut designs in the side of my head which was customary for the time at least that is what I tell people when they see the pictures. I would go around flipping my hair back and forth from one side of my head to the other until one day a girl told me it looked stupid and I immediately stopped.

I never really had a lot of friends, and I think the reason for that was because I was a geek. I mean I am still a geek now but I hide it well. There is a picture of me in second grade and I am wearing a Ricks College t-shirt with black pants, that are obviously too small, and slip on shoes that look like Vans but I was not that cool so they are not. This is how I spent my entire grade school and most of my middle school life. I would wear BYU shirts and jerseys to school and people would make fun of me. I also wore hand me downs from my older cousins which I thought was cool but they were all out of style. Hand me downs were an important part of my childhood and I can remember pulling out clothes from a huge garbage bag. My brother and I would fight over who got the Nike t-shirt or who was going to get the Girbaud jeans. I am sure it looked like dogs fighting over the last piece of meat. My grandmother also bought me a pair of light blue jeans that only old men would wear but for a time they were the only jeans that I had so I wore them and kids would make fun of me. I was not into sports and not very coordinated at the time so I didn't play basketball with the kids and I mostly hung out with girls all the time. I loved Star Wars and other sci-fi shows and would regularly check out books about alien abduction and big foot. At the time I hadn't grown to know that these things were not socially acceptable and that if I wanted to fit in with the "cool" kids that I couldn't talk about them. This lasted until I was in the fifth grade and I remember a couple of kids making fun of me and I decided that I wasn't going to say anything anymore because every time I did I got laughed at. Later that same year a kid asked me to play basketball with them during recess and later told me it was because I was pretty cool when I wasn't talking. That lasted for a few years but eventually I had to speak up.

As I maneuvered through the last few years of grade school I became increasingly aware that I was different from the so called popular group that I was trying so hard to become a part of. I wanted to so bad to be asked to birthday parties and hang out with this group of kids that were so much cooler than I was. From the outside it looked as if everything in their lives were perfect and I wanted that yet I was not perfect. I didn't wear the right clothes, I was the oldest so no one was there to show me what to do, I was not the best looking, and my family did not have money. These things were playing against me and I knew that there was not any way that I was going to be able to break through this barrier. I then decided, at eleven mind you, that it was going to take to a lot to make the transition so I resigned myself to the "lower class" of which I would never break free. I made friends in this class all of who were also Mormon and I went to church with. We would hang out and have sleep overs like everyone else but they were not as great and grand as the upper class of kids. We never had pool parties, we never had girl-boy parties, and no one from the upper class ever showed up at our houses to hang out with us. We weren't sad about it at all, we knew where we stood in life and for the most part, we were fine with that.

I had a great time with these guys that I considered my friends but looking back I was a parasite. I didn't bring anything to the relationship and they all knew it, unfortunately I didn't. Not until years later did I realize what was going on. Not even now do I fully understand the complexity of this relationship and how it has affected my behavior, friendships, and relationships with others. I can't explain the friendship that the seven of us had but I apparently was getting more out of it then they were. During the four years that we all were friends we did a lot of things. We made countless snowboarding trips, we played a lot of street hockey, and we did a lot girl watching since that is what you do when you are on the outside of the popular group. We really did have a lot of fun and since we went to church together the fun never stopped until one day it ended for me.

I had played baseball all growing up, from tee-ball to little league and all of my buddies had played too but there comes a time when you have to decide if you want to continue. If you continue practices become more like practice and more competitive and some kids don't want that. I didn't really have a choice considering my dad was my coach. I am not saying that he forced me to play but any coaches kid will tell you that there is some pressure to continue. I wanted to continue but when my friends all decided to stop playing and I questioned whether I should as well. It was hard to make that break since I now had practice and they could go hang out after school. I also started playing football at this time and they didn't so through the spring and fall I was busy with practice and games. It was tough but we would still hang out on weekends and at church but now I was on the outside since I hadn't been in on the newest adventure. I tried to make it up by inviting them to other things. We once had my dad drop us off in Hailey to Rollerblade the paved trails and skate at the skate park. We had a lot of fun and even talked about doing it again but it never happened.

When we reached junior high we were on different tracks. I spent as much time as I could with these guys since it was a new environment but I still had other responsibilities. Through seventh grade things pretty much stayed the same and we continued to hang out but when we hit eighth grade things started to change. I noticed that they would hide from me in the morning before school and during our lunch break. I never really thought it was about me until one morning I caught them watching for me and when I showed up they took off and hid in a class room. We didn't have a lot of classes together but the ones we did they would sit next to each other and I would be left to find my own seat. This year was a hard one for me since I had no idea what was going on with my friends and I didn't have any time to find out either.

During this time I started to skateboard and I quit rollerblading. My brother and I would skate in our driveway every day trying to learn new tricks. We started becoming friends with another skater from Twin named Jesse that went to the same church as us but that didn't go very often. He was my age and we were in a few classes together. We started spending a lot of time together skating around town. I took skating lessons from Jesse since he had been skating for along time and knew what he was doing, I learned more then just skating though. I learned how to dress as a skater, I would wear the biggest pants I could find and cut them off around the bottom of my shoes. I would wear a long sleeve shirt under my short sleeved shirt even if it was hot. I started growing my hair long and parting it in the middle of my head. I learned how skaters treated each other and in turn how they treated those who didn't skate. We were always helping skaters with things like tricks to moving quarter pipes. If a skater needed your help you helped him no questions asked, on the other hand you didn't talk to posers. Jesse really became one of my best friends and we hung out as much as possible.

Jesse really helped me during that time because he had crossed over the popular barrier because there were only a few skaters back then and everybody thought that he was totally cool. My other friends were still pulling tricks on me all time and I was getting really frustrated and confused since we had been friends since we were in grade school. I was fighting a losing battle in my head, I wanted to stay friends with these guys but I knew that they were trying to make a break. I knew that they didn't want me around any more but I didn't have enough confidence to find new friends. One morning I walked into school from seminary and when my buddies saw me they took off and hid under the bleachers. I was devastated and didn't know what to do until Jesse asked if I wanted to go and sit with him on the basketball floor. There were two parts to our gym where everyone hung out before school started. The popular group sat on the floor of the gym around the basketball court and swapped stories and test answers in their Banana Republic shirts and perfect hair. The rest of the school sat in the upper deck of the bleachers and wished they could sit on the basketball floor. From the main level there was a split staircase where you could go up to the bleachers on the left or down to the floor on the right.

I sat there looking up at the bleacher knowing that I belonged up there, but recognizing that this was my one opportunity to make a name for myself.