The Fire In The Attic

Into The End...

Into The End: I was born in Oxford but grew up in Marietta, Why Douglas Adams will always speak for me (even in death), or Why I haven't slept since January 2005


There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
   - Douglas Adams
   
    I was born in Wheeling, West Virginia at four o’clock in the morning on September 10th, 1984. I moved to Cincinnati when I was two and then moved to Martins Ferry, Ohio at 5. At 18, I went away to college for my first year, came back home over the summer, and then moved my family to Parkersburg, West Virginia. In the fall I returned to Oxford to finish college, lived a summer in London, England, and then spent a year after graduating in Parkersburg. In two weeks I will move to
 and in two months my family will move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
    I don’t like to drive across bridges. It’s not the height, although I’m sure that plays a indirect factor. I can walk or run across them and often do. But I am terrified, utterly terrified, of driving across them. I hesitate to say it’s not because I fear death, because I think everyone in life fears death in their own way. No, my fear of driving across bridges comes from the feeling of being trapped someplace that has inevitable certain consequences. If I were trapped in my car as it sank, I would see the water creeping in. It would sputter through the cracks at first until the pressure was unbearable and it began to neatly poor across my lap and into my shoes. The water would rise and I’d be very cold. I would struggle, my seatbelt would jam, and I would have to be alone with a thundering feeling of anticipation my uncontrollable and intolerable death.

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
- Douglas Adams
   
    I’m 23 years old and here are what I consider to be my two greatest mistakes.
    When I was eight I purposefully knocked over a ladder that had a nest of birds resting on that Do-Not-Step portion. I knew they were there. I knew they were young. I did it anyway. I wanted to see something happen. I was on the hillside with my grandfather, pulling weeds, and wanted to see something happen, something move. The wooden ladder exploded on the ground and the nest shot out across the back patio. I saw the babies birds chirping and I immediately wanted to change my decision. I wanted to pull on time so hard it lurched back, giving me another chance. My grandfather, in his big heavy boots, clomped over to me and half slapped, half punched me in the side of the head. I can’t remember his words, but he was so angry. By this time the mother bird, ignoring my grandfather who was picking up the nest and placing it on the brick barrier that kept the hillside from falling into his house, flew down and began to spin, scratch, and peck at me. I ran but didn’t swat at it. I already felt awful for what I had done to her nest and her babies, but hell if I going to kill another bird. I say that because I ended up killing two of the 5 babies in the nest. My grandfather and I buried them.
    That was my first mistake.
    The second came in January of 2005 when I ended a relationship I knew to be genuine, honest, and true.
    The first mistake taught me to cherish life, even ones that aren’t my own. It’s taught me how to be afraid of failure; something that’s made me capable of things I was once told unable to do. Finally, even though this statement or some variant can be found on a Hallmark cards around the nation, it’s taught me to remember my mistakes and to truly learn from them.
    That brings me to my second mistake. It’s taken me a while, but I’m fixing that one.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
- Douglas Adams

    When I graduated Miami University last year I really didn’t have a plan. In fact, I liked it that way. I wasn’t going to be a doctor or a lawyer so those tracts were out. I knew that I hated capitalism or this “free market” people keep talking about so any business streamline path didn’t appeal to me. To touch it off, there’s no way I’m going to get my masters in Journalism. It seems a little absurd to me to get your masters in something that just wants results and experience. However, I could see myself going to graduate school for something, perhaps education, but I needed to get out of school for a while to “become someone” as my grandfather would say.
    I landed, oddly enough, with my family in Parkersburg, W.Va. I hadn’t planed this but I suddenly realized that I had looming school loans and I was broke as a joke. One thing led to another and my uncle got me a job here, at Graffiti.
    The rest is history, most of which I will not bore you with. But there are some things I’d like to share, sitting here alone in the office on my last day - no one around or walking in.
    I really really really like this job. It’s fun, I write about interesting things, and my coworkers are excellent. Sure, the people in the paper think we’re some strange version of hippies (even though I look exactly like I do in the picture you see with this blog, taken today), but all in all the environment has been very welcoming. There were struggles and difficulties, like most jobs, but my time here has been both precious and edifying.
    Justin McIntosh singlehandedly saved me from what could have been the worst year of my life.
    If you go back to the beginning, that long and perhaps even semi-contrived title of mine, you’ll notice that I said I was born in Oxford but grew up in Marietta, even though the beginning paragraph says to the contrary. Oh, the beauty of metaphors, right? I came into my own in Oxford at Miami University. My beliefs about social responsibility, my passion for justice in all communities, and my feelings about religion all were born there. These latent feelings that have been with me all through adolescence were finally given a sounding board, and I took to the streets.
    So when I came to Parkersburg, I was looking for a home. Sure, we’ve moved around a lot and my feeling of “home” has to fall back on that cliche of “home is where the heart is,” but that’s just something people say because deep down it’d be sweet to have a hometown. At least, that’s this man’s opinion.
    I didn’t know Parkersburg and quite frankly I didn’t really want to. I knew that my family was great and after spending four years with minimal visiting, my time there would help make up for lost days. But Marietta, the home of Justin, became a stomping ground and more of a home than Parkersburg ever could. I went out there, ran there, met other people my age there...I grew up there (stay with me metaphor, come on). I was able to use these things that had made me myself and test them out on the masses that weren’t Oxford.
    In fact, that nearly got me killed.
    I was in a bar with Justin and some other friends we had met. We were enjoying in some beverages and seated with peripheral acquaintances, all of which I didn’t know. I poured myself a beer from the pitcher and suddenly I was waist deep in a conversation with this HUGE dude about westernization v. globalization and whether or not they can exist independently from one another. I guess I was making some great points because he was getting pretty angry, yet he was agreeing with me. I thought it strange, but what the hell? How many time do I get to have this conversation with anyone from the southern Ohio Valley. I’m running with it.
    Meanwhile, this dude suggests we take our conversation outside, not in the confrontational way (at least I thought so) but in a way that says, “Hey, I need to get a smoke, let’s continue this on the stoop.” I got up to leave and this girl’s claws (not nails, claws) dug into my arm.
    “Are you kidding?” she asked me.
    “What?”
    “This dude has an M-16 in his truck and is freakin’ crazy.”
    “I don’t know, he seemed like a pretty nice...”
    “Ben, he’s the one squealing out of the parking space.”
    “Oh. So do you want to talk about globalization without westernization?”
    Laughter.

If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.
-Douglas Adams
   
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
-Douglas Adams

    I don’t know how to end a blog like this (as you can probably tell). I don’t want to go into things that are going to make me cry (because I’m alone in the office and quite frankly I don’t want to look more lonely than I actually am on my last day), and the things I have to say to people - the thank yous and the I will miss yous - will be said without the blogosphere looking in (all 300 hits a day or something).
    It’s been a true pleasure. In the words of Mr. Adams, who has helped me through this terribly long and probably unread my many blog post....

So long, and thanks for all the fish.