Searching for the Light

A student of mine asked me the other day how I was able to stop doing drugs. He was asking because he had just been caught that morning by his parents and was getting ready to go home and face the music (I'm his last class of the day). His question brought up another one, from another student. His question was how I started doing drugs in the first place. Now, some people with disagree with me about sharing my past with my students, but I believe in letting them know that I've fucked things up in the past before, too. One of the many reasons I became a teacher was because I remember what it was like to feel like the teachers I had were completely out of touch with the students, and I was right. A lot of teachers put on these facades of righteousness and perfection so that they can maintain control within their own classrooms. They are the absolute rulers of their domains and they want no trouble keeping it that way. That isn't me. My room is always a bit chaotic and that's the way I like it. I don't let the inmates run the asylum, but I also don't squash their personalities by making them sit perfectly still at their desks and work. Anyway, I digress. I believe in telling my students the truth about my past and my imperfections (of which there are many). So, when my student asked me how I got into drugs, I wasn't about to shut him down and tell him it's none of his business. So, I told them all the truth. Unfortunately, the truth isn't a terribly interesting story. I was hanging out with some friends one afternoon and they decided they wanted to smoke a bowl. Up until then, I had always told them no when they asked. They had stopped asking a while before, but I was bored. As they fired it up, I asked them if I could take a hit. They looked at me as if I had just admitted to having sex with midgets or something. My friend, Tyler, asked me if I was sure. I told him yeah and they handed over the bong. They helped me fire it up and I got high for the first time. It wasn't all that magnificent for me. I felt drunk without the sloshy feeling of all the alcohol in my stomach. I didn't get the munchies until the next day, when I had sobered up. Then, I wanted to eat anything and everything I could get my hands on. I don't know, it didn't hit me as something worth spending all my time and money doing. I would, however, get stoned with my friends whenever the mood struck after that. It wasn't long until I decided to try other things. The first time I did cocaine about blew my fucking mind. I thought my body was going to vibrate apart, literally. It scared the shit out of me because I immediately wanted to do it again. You see, I have an addictive personality, which means I like to do things to extremes. Cocaine was one of those extremes. Because of this, I made sure I only did it that one time. I knew that drug was the one that would kill me if I continued to partake in it. Besides, I'd tried meth and found it to be quite pleasing without the craziness. This lifestyle didn't get any better when I moved into a house with my cousin, James. Our other two roommates, Gary and Brian, were dealers, so I could get what I wanted from them at any time. I even gave them some money and the keys to my truck to go pick up a pound of weed for us to divide up and sell at a profit. That was my one trip into dealing. I found that I didn't like to be the one selling it. I just liked to use it.

Anyway, my student started out asking me how I quit. I told him that it was two parts. The first, and most important, was that I accepted Christ. Now, people can laugh at me and scoff at me when I say that, but it's true. I found God and He helped change me from the inside. This led to the second part of the equation. I believe God made me tired of waking up every day feeling like shit. Before, I would never pay any attention to the way I felt. I just smoked more and felt okay for a while. I finally got fed up with feeling like crap every day. I went to bed tired, slept for 12 or 13 hours, and I woke up tired.It was ridiculous. I got sick of it and decided to stop. This student told me that he just wanted to do this stuff while he was young, before he settled into a job and had to stop. I told him that sounded well and good, but he needed to remember that no addicts started out wanting to be addicted to drugs. They all wanted to do this stuff for fun while they were young. I had friends who got way more into it than I did. Their stories didn't all turn out wonderful. One of them even overdosed and died. That is not something anyone needs to deal with when they're 16, which is how old I was when it happened. He is the reason I never tried heroin. Well, I was also scared of dirty needles, but the main reason was this guy. His death left a lasting impression on me and I remember to this day what it felt like to be told, at my upper echelon high school, that my friend had died from a drug overdose. I think a big part of my shame for him was having to listen to these rich faggot motherfuckers at my high school talk shit about him when they didn't even know him. I was pissed off and unable to do much about it.

So, I told my students that one day I just stopped taking drugs. I walked away from it and never looked back. The closest I've come to doing them again was in the beginning of my teaching career. At the end of my first year of teaching, my cousin and best friend, Michael, died. He was only 32, a year older than me. Then, two years later, my mom suddenly dies from a brain tumor. It was a double-tap that I didn't need. I was so depressed for a while that I thought of getting high again just to make it stop for a little while. Thankfully, I didn't. I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself, let alone ask God to forgive me, if I had given in like that. So, I just manned up instead and got on with life. Nothing more to tell.

Then there's me

I don't know what it was that drew me to the punk scene. I went to my first show in 1985 and saw Black Flag play. This was right before they broke up, so they were not in their heyday by any means. However, it was the crowd that peaked my interest. I saw around me the biggest collection of strange looking people I had ever seen in one place. When you see a social misfit in the standard setting of the public high school or the local mall, you're seeing them in the environment that helped to create their misfit status. When you see them at a show, they're in the environment they created for themselves, where they are comfortable among their peers. This is what intrigued me. To see people that I had seen here and there acting as normal as the so-called "regular" people I encountered every day was fascinating. I think that is what first drew me back to the shows. I wasn't looking to be an outcast or a misfit. I was actually looking to fit in. However, this is where I found a place to fit in that accepted me. It didn't depend on how much money your parents made or what brand of jeans you wore. It was about showing up and taking part in the scene. The more I went to shows, the more people I met. It didn't matter if the shows one week were in Hollywood and the next in Orange County. I would still see some of the same people at both shows. As people, we're tribal by nature, so it was natural to see groups of people at the shows, but these groups weren't trying to make others feel like outcasts, they were just engaging in a ritual of friendship built around a common culture, music. Some of these people were very talented artists who felt as though the mainstream world wouldn't allow them to create what they truly wanted to. Some of them were musicians who wanted to play something simple, from the heart. A lot of us were just bored kids looking for something to do with our time that allowed us to escape from the suburban hells we spent the rest of our days in.

Violence was a fact of life in this scene. When you bring together a large group of teens, some of whom come from very fucked up families, you're going to run the risk of someone or something setting one of them off. However, the difference between scene violence and mainstream America violence was that scene violence rarely, if ever, spilled over into the mainstream and it never got continued outside of the show. I was intensely afraid of the pit the first few shows I went to. It was the place where all the action took place. The place where your expertise in dancing and fighting was put on display. Back then, unlike now, if you fell, people would kick you until you made it back to your feet. There was an incentive to get up quickly, if you even fell at all. I know this sounds bad, but it was the way of our world. Again, it goes back to misfit kids from fucked up lives who got to snap and release their anger toward the bullshit system we live in for a couple of hours. Few people in the scene back then came from nice, well-adjusted families. With everyone coming from the same types of situations, no one there was averse to mixing it up. Being the inquisitive person that I am, I slowly made my way up closer to the pit so that I could observe how things went, what to look out for, and who to stay away from. I observed that a lot of the guys in there moved in a way that looked as though they were skipping along with their heads down and their arms flailing. I then noticed that their arms moved in unison with their bodies so that they kept their balance even when being hit from multiple angles. I wanted to learn how to do this. I figured that the best way to do so would be to jump into the pit and just go for it. This wasn't something I could do at home and explain away to my parents. They didn't even know that I was going to shows. They thought I was just spending a lot of time with my friends at their houses. So, I took a deep breath and jumped in. I began to "skip" in the direction the pit seemed to be moving and flailed my arms like the others around me seemed to be doing. Almost immediately, I was hit by a much larger guy and knocked into the crowd at the side of the pit. The guys I ran into immediately shoved me as hard as they could back into the melee. I was then body checked back into the crowd, who shoved me back into the pit. This went on for a little while until I was able to learn the technique of staying in the mix. I was then able to have a lot of fun just running around and feeling tough. That is, until I flailed my arms around and hit the wrong guy in the face. I don't remember hitting him that hard, but it was hard enough to enrage him and cause him to grab me, spin me around, and punch me in the face pretty damn hard. I would have dropped, except he was holding me up by my shirt and went to hit me again. Now, I was 12 when this happened and he was probably in his late teens or early twenties. Thankfully, my friend's brother, who brought us here, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from me. I stood there, wiping blood from my face with my hands and then wiping my hands on my pants while he tried to talk the guy down from beating the shit out of me. I didn't make things any better when I lost my temper, ran up to the guy, and hit him as hard as I could (which wasn't very hard). He looked surprised, then amused at my anger. Something must have gotten through to him, though, because he left me alone after that and wandered back into the crowd. My friend's brother laughed at me and then took me to the bathroom to wash off my face. Luckily, nothing was busted open on the outside. The inside of me cheek got pretty cut up, but I was able to explain that away to my parents when the time came. I was proud of myself. I had taken a shot from a grown-ass man and walked away from it intact. I would proceed to take this new-found pride into the pit with me many, many times over the next few years.

To be continued...

Who I Am, Who I've Been

My past is something I've had to come to some kind of terms with. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not into forgetting about it and moving on. Without my past, I wouldn't be who I am today. I know that sounds cliche, but it's true. I've never thought or myself as evil or anything like that, but I have to acknowledge that there was something wrong with me. I liked violence too much. I cared too little about the feelings of others. I was raised the same way my siblings were, yet none of them flirted with the darkness like I did. The closest was my brother, Eddie, who came even closer than I did to being arrested. He was actually put on probation for the beating he gave to some kid at a Pennywise show a number of years ago. Maybe it was because my parents let me have more freedom than the others. I've always felt as though I was the experiment child, since I was the oldest. After me, my parents held the others closer to home and kept them from getting out of hand. I'm the only one who was able to run around all night and get into trouble. Boy, did I get into trouble. Thankfully, I was never arrested. The closest I came to it was one night in Santa Monica, when I helped out a gay man who was jumped by two scumbags I had just met through another friend of mine. When I went to help, the other two guys turned on me and beat the shit out of me along with the gay guy. I fought back as best as I could, then the owner of the cafe we were in front of came out with a baseball bat and broke things up. The cops showed up and we were all lined up along the wall. My hands were cuffed behind my back and I had blood running down my face and onto my white t-shirt. The gay guy was confused about who was doing what and I thought for sure that I was going to jail for doing something right for a change. I kept trying to remind the homosexual that I was the one helping him and the cop told me to shut up or he was putting me into the car. His exact words were, "If you say one more thing, just one, I'm putting you in the back of the car." At that point, I couldn't have stopped myself if I tried. I said, "Fine, whatever." He grabbed me and threw me into the squad car. While I sat there, I got more and more angry. I finally decided to show the cop a little something. So, I blew blood out of my nose onto his window. The finally got the whole thing figured out and the officer came to let me out. He took one look at the blood and he made me clean it off with my shirt. Oh well, I was going to throw the shirt away anyway.
The point is, I'm a new person these days. I accepted Christ and became someone new about 17 years ago. I know there are those who would laugh at someone saying that, but it's true. How else can one explain that I went from loving the violence of a good fight to feeling remorse for everyone I'd ever hurt? I never felt remorse or guilt about the people I beat up. I always reasoned that they had it coming. Suddenly, I pray to this God I'd heard about and turn my life over to Him. I figured that He had to do better with it than I was. He definitely did. I still wanted to do the things I used to, the drinking and the drugs, but I'd found a reason to say no. I'd found a reason to think that I could get past it all. Most of all, I'd found a reason. A reason for life. A reason for living and making a difference. This is what was missing from the punk scene I had become a part of. It was the missing piece to the life I was living. Punk was supposed to be about making a change and standing up for what you believe in. I was using the scene as a place to hear good music and get into fights that didn't usually turn into gang violence. I became a part of a scene that cared for the individuals in it. Christian punk and hardcore bands cared about those of us that came to see them play. They wanted us to live lives that would guarantee our place in heaven with them. I could no longer play them off as kooks and losers. I came to understand that most of the members of these bands thought of themselves as just as bad, if not worse, than any of us in the audience. Most of us were not PK's (pastors' kids) or private school kids who grew up hearing the Word and knowing who Christ is. We were the rejected members of society who tried other avenues to escape from families that didn't care. Most of us had tried any combination of sex, drugs, alcohol, and violence to escape from our pasts. Now we had a place where we could come together and worship the Creator who put us here for a higher purpose, and we could be with others who shared our common pasts.
(to be continued...)

Popeye, what name.

I was 18 and got back into going to shows. I used to go to Bionic Records in Cypress, California to pick up new music on weekends. Aaron was this guy who worked the front counter. He would tell me what new stuff came in and what would be good to buy.

I walked in on this particular Friday and Aaron asked me if I was going to the show in NorCo tonight. I had a date and really wanted to go out with this girl. Denny asked who was playing. "Outspoken, Unbroken, Farside, Process, and Mean Season. It's five bucks." Now I have a dilemma. I really wanted to go to this show, but I didn't take girls to shows with me. Not worth the worry time.

I broke the date and went to the show. I saw Popeye hanging out by himself, so I walked up and introduced myself. We talked all the way up until it was his time to play. Then I met Jae Hansel from Outspoken. It was a great night for meeting band people. All the bands crushed it. People were kicking the ceiling tiles in while crowd surfing. Classic.

The girl never talked to me again. I guess she didn't like my excuse. It was kind of lame, but it wasn't like I had a lot of experience with this kind of thing. Oh well. At least the bands were good.

Farside- Rochambeau

Movies that Make You Think

Watched "V for Vendetta" tonight, finally. I know I'm a little past late, but at least I saw it, huh? Interesting movie. Made me think about things around us. About the government and their incessant need to know what's going on in our lives. It's not unforeseeable that our government could do something similar to what was represented in the film. People need to think about their own lives when offered the chance to participate in the decision-making process of the government. My favorite line from the movie: "People should not be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of the people." Great line.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. Took my wife out to lunch today with her parents. Managed to bum out her lunch by getting mad at my daughter. I don't know why I get mad, I just do. Apologized like it was cool. She's still a little perturbed. I think she believes that the rage of my father and from my youth may still be present in me today. She could be right, although I've not had one incident in 5 years or so. I think I've grown up beyond acting like that. Maybe I have, maybe I haven't.

Going to breakfast tomorrow morning with her parents and the rest of the family. Some may ask why I haven't mentioned my family. My mom died two years ago and I have no reason to wish her a happy day. She knew I loved her and I do miss her. The rest of my family can suck it. That's all. Later.

A Little Update

Hey all, I know I've been a little remiss in my updates and for that I apologize. It's getting down to the end of the school year and I always get a little burnt out at this time. I don't know what it is, but I just get worn out and can't wait for the end of the year. I'm teaching summer school this summer, so I won't have the break that others will have, but that's okay. I'm teaching English 3 (junior English), so it's going to be a piece of cake. This age group can work independently and I enjoy my conversations with them. I'll also be taking off with my wife and daughter to a number of places this summer. First will be up to Silverwood Lake for four days of camping, swimming, and fishing. We'll also be hitting Doheny Beach to camp, Mammoth Mountain to fish some more, and San Diego for the Fourth of July. Pretty cool, huh?

On top of this, I'm also trying to write a book. I've been working on it in one form or another for a few years now and have just started over again for the third time. I just get to the point where I'm not happy with what I have. I think this time, though, will be the one I actually finish. I'm already happier with the tone and the flow of the work on this draft. We'll see.

Okay, so that's it for now. Take care of each other and stay safe. Laters.

Playlist: April 19, 2008

Here is the latest playlist. I know it's been a while since I last posted one and I hope that anyone who has listened before will listen again. I hope people also enjoy the fruits of my labor. I really do love to do this and am getting a chance to unload a little of what I think about. I'm not saying I think big things or that my views are oh-so-important. I'm just saying that I am appreciative of the forum for my letting some of those thoughts and views out. Anyway, I hope people enjoy this podcast. Later.

1. Gameface- Green Tree
   
2. Champion- Thank You Note (live)
   
3. Get the Most- It's Up to Us
   
4. Judge- Forget this Time
   
5. H2O- Guilty by Association (live)
   
6. Social Justice- Hear the Cries
   
7. No Image- Still Here
   
8. No Image- Rat Race
   
9. No Image- Nutmeg United
   
10. No Image- No Image
    
11. Supertouch- On 3
    
12. Atmosphere- Smart Went Crazy
    
13. Sage Francis- Lie Detector Test
    
14. On the Outside- Broken Never Hopeless
    
15. Stand & Fight- Break the Mold
    
16. True Colors- One Chance
    
17. Against the Wall- Thinking for Yourself (demo)
    
18. Amenity- The Way You Live
    
19. Minor Threat- Screaming at a Wall
    
20. Minor Threat- Good Guys (Don't Wear White)
    
21. Minor Threat- Salad Days
    
22. Minor Threat- In My Eyes

Podcast

I'm still here!!!

Okay, so it's been a while since I've updated this thing. It's been a busy time for me and my family and I haven't spent all that much time on the computer. Things at my school have been a little crazy for the last week or so. On April 5th, a 16-year old student at the high school I teach at was shot and killed at a party in Hesperia, California. This guy was very popular and a good athlete, so the school was, therefore, stunned. I had the unenviable job of helping my students navigate their way through the quagmire of emotions and get them back on track. Unfortunately, we had state testing this week and that is a HUGE deal at our schools. This meant that the students had a week to get their stuff together and get their heads into the testing mode. This is not an easy thing to do, so it was a hard road.

On a slightly better note, our students raised almost $20,000 dollars, on their own, for the murdered student's family. His parents are very poor and were not sure how they were going to pay to bury their son. Now, they don't have to worry about it. I was extremely proud and touched by the students at Sultana High School and their work ethic and generosity. Now I wish they would transfer that work ethic into the classroom.

Anyway, I'll be posting a new playlist and podcast in the next couple of days. I've got some stuff to talk about, so it should be kind of fired up. We'll see. Until then, laters.

First 5- February 28

Well, it's been beautiful weather for the last couple of days here in Victorville. The sun is shining and there's no wind. Very nice, indeed. Below is the first 5 for this glorious day. Enjoy.

The Smiths- Bigmouth Strikes Again (live)
H2O- On Your Feet
Strength 691- Easy Way Out
R.E.M.- Nightswimming
Mark Lind- Too Much

Daily First 5

Okay, so I've decided to put up a daily first 5. These are the first 5 songs that I listen to in the morning on my way to work. I don't know why I feel the need to do this, but I do. I'll post them each morning and invite anyone who may read this to post their own in response so I can see what other people are listening to.

So, today's first 5 are:

Jamie Walters- Children of the Night
Still Life- Cock Block
108- Scandalous
As Friends Rust- Austin, We have a Problem
Joy Division- Means to an End