When I was in high school, one of my friends had a reputation for being a prankster. Sometimes I found myself guilty by association, and sometimes I was an actual accomplice. He went through a phase during which he liked to find pictures of nude or scantily clad women and post them in friends’ lockers or Pee-Chee folders, so that when the person would open the folder, he’d have a little surprise waiting for him.

He actually got in a bit of trouble when he did that to a girl in our choir. The girl had red hair, you see, and so did the girl in the picture, and the picture was exceptionally lewd, so the girl reported my friend to the teacher. By way of a reprimand, the teacher famously told him, “Now, I like to look at a Playboy every now and then—”, which still makes us laugh, even all these years later. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, my friend thinks that was a cruel thing to have done to the girl, and if he could do things differently, he would. He also has daughters now, and that tends to make people grow up real quick, as well as to make them much more sympathetic to the tribulations that girls often experience in school.

Back then, however, the picture prank was something he did somewhat regularly. Once, he went to the library and found a National Geographic magazine with a story about Tahiti, which was full of half-naked women, so he pulled out a page and kept it for his own nefarious purposes. We sat next to each other in choir class, which meant that we shared a music folder. On that fateful day, when we sang the song “The Cloths of Heaven,” I opened the music and found the picture of a half-naked Tahitian woman. Ha ha. Then, when we finished the song, we put the music and the picture back into the folder, never to be looked at again, since the two of us learned and memorized music faster than most people. I only mention that fact because it’s apropos to the story. We had the song memorized from that day on, so we didn’t use the music anymore.

Three or four months later, our choir drove to a college an hour or so away, in order to participate in a somewhat prestigious regional music festival. I don’t remember much about the trip, to be quite honest with you (it’s been almost twenty-five years now), but I do remember that we did well enough during the afternoon performance to qualify for the finals later that evening, and one of the songs we performed was “The Cloths of Heaven.” At some point between the afternoon show and the finals, a couple of people came up to my friend and me, saying, “That wasn’t funny, you guys,” or, “Not cool.” We were mystified, and had no idea what they were referring to.

That night at the finals, it was our choir’s turn to take the stage. We filed onto the risers in our robes and awaited the announcer, who walked out a moment later. “Interesting story about this next choir,” the announcer told the audience of several hundred. He explained to them that the judges got quite a shock when they opened the music for “The Cloths of Heaven” and found a picture of a half-naked Tahitian woman inside. Our choir director was unaware that this had happened, but he had no doubt about who was to blame for this disgrace. He glared furiously at the two of us as we realized what had happened and tried unsuccessfully to suppress our giggles. Our surprised choirmates turned to each other, saying, “Who did that?” and others turned to us and asked, “Was it you guys?” as the entire audience erupted into laughter.

Our director was really angry, and after our performance he pulled my friend and me aside into a rehearsal room. He was convinced that we had done it on purpose, to prank the festival. We had to explain to him that no, this was just a private thing, and that we hadn’t used the music for months. We’d long since forgotten about the Tahitian. Out of the seventy numbered music folders our choir used, each one of which contained one or two copies of “The Cloths of Heaven” (our folder had two, one for each of us), the teacher’s aide had unluckily grabbed OUR numbered folder, and THAT copy, to turn in to the judges. I don’t think the director believed us at first, but eventually he had to admit that the circumstances were pretty funny, and we got off with a Well, Don’t Do It Again.

Oh, and our choir won the competition, by the way, so there you go. Apparently, sex sells.

In the early 1980′s, the longest-lasting and most revolutionary new product was not the Rubik’s Cube, the tiny stuffed Garfield doll, or even MTV—it was the personal computer that would go on to change the world.  A closely related product that was also created around that time was the video arcade game. Home video games, like the Atari 2600, or even the quaintly archaic Pong, had existed for a number of years by then, but video arcades were a new and exciting phenomenon. Pinball was for old people; video games were for us kids.

The grocery stores near our house both had a couple games each, but the nearest serious video game parlors were Pizza World (which at the time of this entry is the current location of El Portón, an excellent Mexican restaurant) and Nob Hill Lanes, a bowling alley with a smaller but more unusual lineup of games, including a 2-player Ms. Pac-Man console, which was—and still remains—my all-time favorite video game.

I loved Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man so much that I bought the ‘strategy guide’ books about how to beat the games.  I even carried my little red portable cassette recorder to the arcade with me and recorded myself playing the games.  I took the tapes home and listened to them in headphones, imagining how the game play went, and trying to re-enact it in my little mind’s eye.

One day, we got a new refrigerator, and it came in a gigantic cardboard box. When it stood on end, it was the size of a video game, which gave me and my brother a brilliant idea: LET’S MAKE OUR OWN PAC-MAN MACHINE.  That’ll be great, we thought. Now, all our friends in the neighborhood won’t have to go to Pizza World or Nob Hill Lanes to play, they can just come to our front yard. And we’d be rolling in money!  Yakima wasn’t anything like Silicon Valley (either then OR now, quite frankly) and besides, I was ten and my brother was six, but at least we had imagination and determination.

The contraption we made is one of the things I really wish we taken at least one picture of.  It was absolutely ingenious, but surprisingly difficult to describe.  Follow me closely.  Here’s the type of original Pac-Man machine we were trying to emulate.

We stood the refrigerator box vertically, and then drew a Pac-Man maze screen in magic marker on the top half of the box. I think my brother drew the side panels, and we collaborated on the name plate that said, “PAC-MAN” on it. Directly underneath the ‘screen’, we placed a smaller cardboard apple box, which was for the joystick and coin slot. We cut a slot for people to insert quarters, and we sculpted a heap of clay into a joystick and plopped a golf ball on top of it.  Voila!

So now it looked good, but it didn’t do anything yet; we had to figure out how to bring it to life. We knew that one of us would have to be inside the box, but we struggled to come up with a workable solution. I think it was Mom who had the idea of using a box knife to cut a rectangular ‘track’ hole along a section of the maze we had drawn, and then we could stick a magic marker through the hole and tape a cardboard Pac-Man to the end of it to move him through the maze.  So that’s what we did.  The Pac-Man kept falling off the end of the pen, though, so it took a while to figure out how much electrical tape to stick him on with.  For the machine’s sound, I had all those cassettes I’d been making for weeks, so I put some batteries in the cassette player and brought it in the box with me.

We were ready to go.  We ran up and down the street, yelling, “Pac-Man!  Play Pac-Man!”  We cajoled everyone to give it a try, and somehow they all went along with it.  When someone put in a quarter, I would press the Play button on my tape recorder and the introductory song would play, followed by the sound of game play.  The person would grab the golf ball joystick and move it around as best they could, and I would move the marker with the Pac-Man on the end of it through the maze route, randomly.  Some people actually played this thing multiple times, but most realized right away that they weren’t actually able to control the Pac-Man at all, and that they’d spent the same amount as if they’d played the real game.  I think the box lasted only a few days, until the novelty wore off, both for us and for our friends.  But, like I said, I would dearly love to see a picture of that bizarre homemade contraption.

Since we’re on the subject of Pac-Man, once when my brother and I were at an arcade playing the game, a slightly younger kid we didn’t know (or maybe we did; I don’t quite remember) came up and said, very quickly and dramatically, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was this maze?  And there was all your favorite food and you just couldn’t resist?  And then you CHASE it?  And then when you get there, you EAT it?  That’d be awesome.“  My brother and I stifled our laughter and kinda said, “Sure, yeah. . .awesome—” and turned back to our game.

Portland has a ‘vintage’ arcade down in Old Town, and every once in a while, I like nothing better than to plunk a couple of quarters down and spend an hour or so in an attempt to get the new high score on Ms. Pac-Man, and occasionally I even get it.  You’ll know if I do, by the way, since I like to use the pseudonym Mr. T, so if you see ‘MRT’ on the high score list, that might very well be me.  Be all that as it may, I was very glad when that arcade opened, because that meant that all those skills I’d honed as a kid weren’t going to lie dormant anymore.  I would hate to think I wasted all that time on frivolous endeavors.  I can rest assured, though, because there’s still something to be said for hand-eye coordination, and running through a maze with your favorite food that you just can’t resist.

There’s also something to be said for the old video games from the ‘golden age’ of the early to mid-1980′s.  Despite their simplicity, they were captivating in a way that more modern games absolutely are not.  If you  haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing them, I urge you to arm yourself with a handful of quarters (most of these games, if they’re still around, still only cost a quarter to play, amazingly) and give some of them a try.  I know you’ll be glad you did.

When I was a kid, even well into my teens, I didn’t like very many foods.  These days, I eat and enjoy pretty much anything from any part of the world, but it wasn’t always so.  Peas and cole slaw were my two least favorites.  The first grade school I went to had notoriously nasty peas.  I don’t know what they did to them, but I’ve never tasted anything like them either before or since.  It was a Catholic school (despite the fact that my family wasn’t Catholic; that’ll be a story for another day), and one of the nuns would stand over you and force you to finish everything on your plate.  It was nightmarish.

Ironically, the same school had one dish that was a hit with everyone, and we always looked forward to it when it came up on the menu.  It was called Hamburger Gravy Over Rice, and I’ve never seen that anywhere else either.  I somehow talked my mom into making it at home once, but it wasn’t the same.

I’ve grown to like peas, particularly the ones in the pods, but cole slaw still remains elusive to me.  The other day, my friend made some that was delicious, and that reminded me of a story that has become famous in our family.  Not long after Mom and Dad split up, when I was about ten, Dad took Brother and me to ColonelChicken for dinner.  We sat in the ‘terrarium’ room, with the fountain and leafy plants.  I ate my chicken and mashed potatoes, and even my biscuit, but I left the dreaded cup of cole slaw untouched on the table.  ColonelChicken’s was the worst.  Dad told me that we weren’t going to leave until I ate the entire thing.  I balked, and he got angry, so I picked at it and ate it as slowly as possible, washing it down with water as I did so.

The minutes ticked away, and Dad was getting irritated.  “Come on!” he yelled.  “You could eat that whole thing in one bite!”

“No I can’t,” I said, “I’ll gag.”

“Do it,” he said sternly, wrinkling his forehead in the way that signified genuine anger.  “All in one bite.”

“Okay, but I’m gonna spit it out.  It’s so gross!”

“I don’t care.  Eat it.  Now!”

“Okay, but don’t be surprised by what happens.”

I dipped my spork into the cup until I had the entire contents resting on it.  I held my breath and slowly moved the spork to my mouth.  I had to breathe, eventually, and as soon as the smell hit my nostrils, I had to fight back my gag reflex.  Dad was still giving me The Look, so I had no choice but to ease the spork into my mouth.  It was the worst bite of anything that I’d ever tasted.  I chewed a little bit, but I could feel my gag reflex about to happen.  I reached for the water glass, but it was too late.  My body rebelled, and the disgusting bolus (I love the word ‘bolus’, and finally have the opportunity to use it!) exploded from my mouth all over the table and floor.  Dad was furious, and he grabbed a bunch of napkins and cleaned it all up.

“See?  I told you that would happen,” I said, unable to stop myself from laughing.  Dad couldn’t even look at me, he was so mad.  I sat in the chair and laughed as he mopped the floor.

That was the last time I ate the cole slaw at ColonelChicken, and quite possibly the last time Dad ever forced me to eat anything.  I guess he learned, albeit the hard way, that my warnings had merit.

These days, the tables have turned.  I got my mom to eat sushi for the first time two years ago, which is funny because she actually lived in Japan for a couple of years before I was born, but never tried sushi because she was afraid of it.  I told her that was hilarious.  “It’s good enough for them; good enough for you.”  She said that on the air force base, food would sit around for a while, sometimes, and if I’d ever smelled some of the things that were in storage, I’d be afraid of sushi too.  Fair enough.

As a bookend for this story, here is the secret recipe for the cole slaw in question.  I will pass, thank you very much, but please report back to me if you actually make it and enjoy it.

My favorite thing to write about lately seems to be my childhood, between the ages of about eight and eleven.  Not sure why that is, exactly, but it’s interesting to revisit those times from an adult perspective.  Here’s one that’s particularly memorable and funny.

When my parents split up, I became the ten-year-old de facto Man of the House, which meant that sometimes I had to do things that Dad would prevously have been asked to do.  I remember being sent to the store once by Mom to buy some tampons.  She was unable to make the trip herself, for obvious reasons, and my brother was too young, so the task fell to me.  I rode my bike to Wray’s Thriftway and parked it in the bike rack.  As I walked through the aisles, I became increasingly mortified by what I’d been sent to do.  I attempted to distract myself by looking at the candy bars, and I decided to purchase one, in order to make bearable the awkward situation I was preparing to face.  I carried my candy bar and walked quickly to the mysterious tampon aisle.

As I stood there, staring at the huge and confusing array of pastel-colored boxes, I quickly realized that Mom had neglected to tell me anything about which kind to buy.  I knew nothing about them (and I still don’t, let’s face it!) except what I’d seen in advertisements on TV.  I knew that mothers and daughters seemed to talk about them in great detail at the breakfast table (as well as ‘douches’, whatever those were), and that women loved to play tennis while they were using them, but I knew nothing about sizes or materials or shapes or any of that.  I grabbed a box by a brand name that I recognized and made a beeline to the checkout counter, avoiding all eye contact and making sure not to go through the line of any of the checkers that I knew.  I decided on the counter nearest the exit, and I nervously placed my two items on the conveyor belt, candy bar first.

The lady in front of me had about a million items in her cart, and I stood there fidgeting, praying that no one would get behind me in line.  My prayers went unanswered, and a whole family of people appeared behind me.  I turned my back to them and kept my eyes facing the door, where freedom beckoned.  When the woman in front of me was finally finished, the checkout lady saw my tiny Twix bar and huge pink box of tampons and absently asked, “Did you find everything you need?”

I nodded as she scanned my candy bar and placed it on the other end of the counter.  As she scanned the tampons, i blurted out, “Uh—they’re not for me.”

She gave me a polite laugh and said, “No kidding.”  She was in her forties, I think (but kids have no gauge for age; you’re a Kid, then you’re a Teenager, then you’re an Adult, then at some point you become Grandpa), and she certainly didn’t need me to explain the situation, but in my heightened state, I was convinced that she was trying to humiliate me even further when she asked, “Paper or plastic?”

Unaccustomed as I was back then to that innocuous question, I thought she was talking about the tampons, but I finally realized that she was merely inquiring about what kind of bag I wanted to carry the stuff home in.  “Paper,” I said, which was more difficult to carry on my bike, but at least the contents of the bag would be safely hidden.  I paid for the items, zoomed out the door, got on my bike and rode home before anyone else saw me.

In retrospect, I don’t know why that was such a humiliating experience.  It certainly wasn’t weird for the checker until I MADE it weird.  Maybe my mom was uncomfortable asking me, so I internalized that discomfort and was ‘primed’ for the situation to be awkward.  I was years away from being familiar with Hamlet, but his line, “There is neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so,” would have been a useful one to keep in mind that day.

I still think of my hilariously asinine statement every time I see tampons in the store.  They’re not for me.  For the record, I’ve bought them a few times since then, and it isn’t awkward at all.  I’m sure that’s because when I was ten, I learned that I don’t need to blurt out that they aren’t mine; everybody already assumes that.

There’s been a lot of dream talk around here lately—Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That—but I’m sure you know by now that means I’ve been in one of those cycles where I’ve been extremely busy and out of town a lot.  I’ve been gone for gigs, and for the Fourth of July weekend, and then I spent the better part of a week at the Oregon coast with Mom and Brother’s Family.  I spent two weekends in a row in Yakima, and actually had a great time, for a change.  There’s lots of stuff to potentially write about, but no time to process and think about it all yet, so in the meantime, I’ve decided to dip back into my childhood for this entry.

This story is about a kid in my fifth-grade class who used to pick on me mercilessly.  I genuinely hated him, in the way that only children are capable of hating each other.  The good news for me at the time was that he was absent from school a lot, and no one seemed to know why.  There were rumors that he was sick, or that his parents traveled all the time, but we never really knew for sure.  I only remember him being in class for a few weeks of fifth grade, and a handful of days of sixth grade before another of his famously long absences.

A few months into the school year, we finally learned what had happened to him.  Our teacher, Mr. G (which, incidentally, stood for ‘Growcock’; I’ve written about him before), brought in a copy of the newspaper and read us a story from the front page about how the boy had died from leukemia.  “What’s loo-keem-uh—what’s that?” someone asked.  Mr. G explained to us that it’s a form of cancer that spreads through the inside of your bones, and that it’s extremely rare in children, but devastating when it does appear.  He went on to read that our classmate’s teenage brother donated some of his own bone marrow to help the boy’s cause and hopefully give him a new lease on life, but two days before he was scheduled to be released from the hospital, he lapsed into a coma and died.  He was eleven years old, as was most of the rest of our class.  We were dumbfounded.  He was dead?  How was that even possible?  I found myself feeling secretly relieved at the news, since When Bad Things Happen To Bad People It’s Good, at least in a kid’s mind.  As far as I was concerned, justice had been served.  I also found myself wishing, in my little heart of hearts, that some of my other tormentors would be similarly dealt with, by God or whoever.

I had forgotten about all of this until my friend reminded me of the boy during my last trip to Yakima.  Somehow he came up in conversation—I’m not entirely sure how—but we were talking about our grade-school teachers, since my friend had just recently run into one of them at the grocery store.  The strange thing (one of the many) about this story is that the boy’s legacy lives on to this day, since he happened to be born into an extremely famous sports family.  They’re so famous, in fact, that I won’t even write his name because it’s unusual and you may very well recognize it.  The dad was a pitching coach, and he’s still alive.  The brother who heroically donated his bone marrow went on to be a major-league pitcher, and since his retirement from baseball, he seems to have recently started a multi-level marketing business in Canada, which is a bit strange.  A third brother went on to be a professional pitcher as well.  Since I don’t follow sports whatsoever, and I haven’t since I was a kid, I had no idea how famous they all are, so I when I typed their names into FamousSearchEngine, I was shocked by how many results came up, and by the fact that almost every article mentioned the boy who had died so tragically from leukemia, all those years ago, and almost every interview featured one of the family members saying how they don’t go a day without thinking of him.  But I knew him, and he was cruel.  He was more than just an abstraction in a news story; more than just a little halo in a hospital room.

Yakima is a town from which very few well-known people hail.  It’s a bit like Canada, in the fact that people who grow up there know the names of every famous Canadian, and they can rattle them all off on cue.  It’s a secret society.  Those of us who grew up Yakima have the same ability to run down the list of famous Yakimaniacs from memory, and we can do that even if you wake us up in the middle of any random night.  My personal favorite is Raymond Carver, the amazing author, but there are a few others, such as comedian Sam Kinison and actor Kyle MacLachlan.  Oleta Adams, who famously sang with Tears For Fears, had my dad as her insurance agent back in the 1970′s. (Incidentally, here’s an awesome live video of Woman in Chains.)  Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson supposedly each owned a ‘getaway’ house somewhere on Scenic Drive, but none of us knew which houses they actually were.  Further down the list are a pair of Olympic gold-medalist skiers who also happen to be twin brothers, and there are a few supernumerary professional football players.  Now, at the very moment I decide to tell this dark and surreal childhood tale, I find out that there’s this legendary baseball family as well.

At this point, I would normally try to find some way to wrap this up in a nice little package, possibly with a ribbon and a bow, and leave it for posterity, but I don’t know that I can do that in this particular instance.  I should, of course, mention that despite my mixed feelings at the time, I hope my former classmate rests in peace, and my heart definitely goes out to the family now, who are clearly still dealing with the grief and the legacy of this thirty-year-old tragedy, which never quite seems to go away.