My 2 best friends

I’ll admit straight up, I have an addictive personality. I get hooked on things very quickly, even notoriously non addictive substances like gummi bears. Coffee and Cigarettes have been my lifelong battle. I should’ve known better but by the time I became self aware enough to realize my tendency to get hooked I already had those two under my belt. I discovered the gummi addiction much later and have adjusted my life accordingly.

My parents both smoked and drank coffee in ridiculous amounts. My childhood memory is hazy due to a constant cloud of smoke in the house. As a child I hated it and encouraged my parents to quit at every opportunity. Our house smelled horrible and I smelled horrible. I tried coffee once when I was 15 and thought it too tasted horrible. I couldn’t comprehend why these two seemingly sane people would put themselves through this torture of smell and bad taste. I was going to be different.

I was 14 or 15 when I first started smoking weed. I wasn’t a chronic user, maybe once or twice a month throughout my teenage years and into my 20’s. I didn’t mind the smell of it and actually enjoyed it. It was far superior to cigarettes plus it made me giggle. I didn’t realize that this may have been a tactical mistake in life that set me up to make taking up smoking cigarettes easy as hell.

Jayne was an English exchange student and I liked her and wanted to impress her of course so when she produced a pack of Benson and Hedges and offered me one, despite my earlier stance on smoking I took one and dutifully smoked it along with her as we discussed music. Now most people probably hack and cough the first time they smoke, I had already conditioned my lungs so it went down easy. Plus, I didn’t realize that nicotine gave you a head rush. Holy crap, smoking was kinda fun. I had it all wrong, no wonder my parents smoked like chimneys. I took every opportunity to sneak a smoke over the course of that fall. The head rush was way shorter than weed so it could be accommodated over a lunch break. I found, however, that over time the head rushes came fewer and fewer so I thought the answer was to smoke more. 17 year olds aren’t the smartest creatures and reasoning wasn’t my strength. Of course, in short time I got almost no head rushes and only got the shakes when I didn’t have a smoke. I didn’t mind though. I grew to love it. I loved the whole process. Of pulling out a cigarette, looking at it, lighting it. Taking that first drag that filled your lungs with warm smoke and calmly and cooly exhaling. It became a ritual for relaxation, a ritual for killing time and a ritual for rewarding myself for a job well done.

Best Time for a Smoke
After a meal
With first coffee of the morning
After sex
Taking a break at work
Just before bed

That same year I started working at a gas station/coffee shop on the highway. My first love Suzanne who had broken my heart the year earlier advised me of the effects of caffeine. “The buzz you get from caffeine is super intense and it keeps you awake”. Fuck, I was sold. I had to try it. All you needed to do at the time was convince me that there was some sort of drug like effect and I’d be all over it. I started bitterly slurping back coffee at work to kill the time and I never did really feel the effects of it. Of course I told others I did but it just tasted horrible but something compelled me to have more and more of it. Soon I realized it was the cigarette thing all over. If I didn’t have coffee or a smoke I would start to get a headache or get antsy. I was a double addict at 17 and I made a decision at that early age that surprises me. It might have been the only smart thing I did as a teenager. I realized then I get hooked very quickly and that no matter the temptation I would never try any drug that was notoriously addictive. I did a bit of research and concluded that cocaine, meth and heroin were right out. I would never do it and I never did. I just can’t risk it.

Best Time for Coffee
First thing in the morning
Something to sip on while pondering a deep mystery
Something to share when a friend comes over
In the evening when you’re so tired you can’t make it to a normal bedtime
In the car on a long drive

Coffee and cigarettes have been my companions through my life. They have been with me in celebration and in failure. They have been constants. No matter what changes have gone on, those two have always been there for me as at least some sort of levelling effect.

I was 33 when I first tried to quit. It was a bit of a whim but I thought I would try out these nicotine patches when I was about to board a flight from Calgary to Halifax. I hated long distance flying because the withdrawl effects combined with enclosed spaces always made me uncomfortably fidgety. The patches worked for a few weeks and I was surprised at how easy it was. Soon, however, I started missing smoking. I was realizing that my life was really boring because I had nothing to punctuate time with. I had nothing to do on breaks from work, I had nothing to do while commercial breaks were on TV. I started missing that feeling of the first inhale. I fell off the wagon a month later. I started having “just one” a day and soon I was smoking as much as I was before. I quit again the following year and actually mustered the willpower to keep it going for 2 years. By this time it was apparent my marriage was basically over and I needed something just for me so I started smoking on the sly. I never did tell her I started again because I knew I would get an angry lecture and I didn’t want to put any more strain on a situation I already didn’t know how to handle. Besides, this was just for ME. In my mind, when I had sacrificed my own happiness to stay so long in a dysfunctional relationship for her benefit, the least I could do was smoke. I developed a cleaning ritual involving two rounds of hand and face washing with soap, two splashes of purell clear hand sanitizer (that was the only one that cut smoke, i tried other hand sanitizers and they didn’t work for some reason) and then one final round of soap and water. For my breath I always used chewable peppermints. I became very quick with this ritual and could get rid of the smell of smoke in under 2 minutes. My coworkers were always amazed at how I could smoke like a chimney and my wife never knowing. Minutes before she’d meet me after her work was done I’d be frantically inhaling my last smoke of the day and dashing off to the washroom. I had a constant supply of little hand sanitizer bottles stashed all over the place like an alcoholic would hide booze. It was a lot of work and a lot of stress to keep this hidden but it seemed worth it to have that little thing, my friend, cigarettes along with me. Eventually I got tired of it and finally told her shortly before I left her. I would quit once again when I realized that smoking may have been a contributing factor to my snoring. Colleen was now in my life and I was so in love with her I was willing to part with my best friend. Each time I quit it was easier and easier and I really didn’t have much of a problem. I knew cravings would pass and just rode it out. I fell off the wagon a few times during the early part of 2010 when things in my life started going wrong. I didn’t realize that my growing OCD might be playing a part in things going wrong, nor did I realize exactly how much nicotine actually helped OCD. It’s probably why I stuck with it so long. It actually did help me to a certain degree.

As I write this I have recently attempted to quit smoking and coffee. The jury is still out.

Morrissey was a bad role model

A lot of times I totally get the wrong end of the stick.  Like totally the wrong end.  If there were awards for misreading situations I would be strutting down the red carpet confident in receiving a tiny statue on stage.  My life of dating and wooing the opposite sex has pretty much been the epitome of getting the wrong end of the stick.  Part of the problem of living in such a small town like Whitewood was that the available members of the opposite sex were a little limited at the best of times, toss in a heavier male to female ratio and it became even more difficult.  I did not date in High School, not one bit.  Actually for the most part I was pretty happy with the situation because I sorta figured there were no other oddballs out there like me so what was the point?  Although getting laid seemed like a neat idea I wrote that off as something I could wait for.  There were a couple of exceptions though.  One of my best friends was a year older than me and she happened to be a girl.  In the early stages of our friendship forged by a love of mopey British pop music I totally misread the situation.  I was convinced she was into me, like really into me.  She used to call my place looking for me!  Obviously I was in.  The problem I reasoned was I wasn’t exactly sure what to do.  I mean I was treading into really uncharted territory.  I had only kissed a girl once before, that was at air cadet camp 2 years earlier, I was 12.  I spent hours and hours working out how I was going to let her know that I was also really into her and that we were going to have this fantastic life together and get the hell out of Whitewood and roam the world and inflict our badassery on planet earth.  “What if I’m wrong?” was a pretty common refrain in those rumination sessions in my adolescent bedroom.  I filled myself so full of doubt that pretty much 2 years passed without actually making any reference to me, by this time, being absolutely in love with her.  Of course the ideal moment presented itself one afternoon as we were parked on a dirt road a half a mile out of town listening to music and dissecting every little angle of Morrissey’s lyrics and drinking lotsa booze.  So while “There is a light that never goes out” played in the background I thought “oh god my chance has come at last” and it was now or never. Captain Smooth was about to make his move.  “I LOOOOOOVE YOU, I ALWAYS HAVE”.

That’s where I first learned about awkward silence and awkward stares.  I can still picture the look of horror on her face.  Absolute shock.  Of course I was expecting her to rush into my arms and we’d passionately kiss.  Instead I got “b bbbut I can’t”.  Well this seemed like something we should reason through.  Yeah I see so many mistakes from this vantage point in my thinking at the time.  “we’re friends, really good friends, why can’t it be that?”, “I cant date guys from Whitewood, it would be wrong”, “I’m not ready to date right now”.  Okay this was starting to look bad, but I pressed on with more questions only to finally be dealt “Look, Rob, it’s not happening okay? I’m going home”.  With that, the summer of 1986 had begun.  I called it Summer of Mope.

The summer ended without much being done and by the time September rolled around I had become at peace with things and our friendship resumed.  I was back on track to being happy again.  Enter Jayne.  Jayne was a poor exchange student from Manchester….England! Manchester? The reason she ended up in Whitewood was a little bizarre.  She had been pen pals with a girl from Whitewood and somehow this exchange thing worked out so Jayne was to spend 3 months in Whitewood, her penpal was to spend 3 months in Manchester.  It’s not hard to see who got the raw deal on that.  For some reason, though, Jayne really liked it.  I think it was just so different from her reality it probably seemed fun.  I mean, it was only 3 months.  The soul crushing boredom doesn’t really kick in until 4 months.  By the time you’ve spent 17 years there you’re just too far gone.  Of course, being fresh blood in this town she instantly became the most popular person.  And she instantly seemed to like me.  We hung out a lot together talking music.  It took about 15 minutes for me to fall in love with her.   She introduced me to the music of the Housemartins and got me hooked on Joy Division.  She also unfortunately got me hooked on cigarettes.  She smoked, yeah she was that cool. Wanting to be that cool as well of course I took her up on her offer to have a smoke every now and then.  I didn’t realize I’d be living with Jayne’s influence 24 years later still. I loved smoking and loved hanging out with her.  Knowing time was of the essence I had to move a little faster than I did last time.  Instead of declaring my love at an awkward moment I’d just go in for a kiss sometime when we  were alone.  I did it.  Unfortunately we were not alone, it was in front of about 40 people.  We actually kissed, she kissed me back.  We stumbled off into a field and drunkenly made out for a few hours likely.  I went home on top of the world.  The next monday at school she barely spoke to me.  Of course the whole school instantly knew we hooked up and for the rest of her time there we spent maybe a half hour together.  I’m not sure what it was, perhaps the horror of becoming gossip at a new place or embarrassment at slumming it with me?  When she was leaving she did write a very lovely note to me urging me to stay in touch.  We wrote for a year or so and then just sorta forgot about each other.  I really am curious what happened to her.  I mostly would like to curse her out for getting me into smoking.  I never did figure out what exactly caused the awkwardness.  My best bet at the time was maybe I had bad breath.  I took better care of my teeth after that.

How the Decibel Demons thankfully never came to be.

I remember a scene in the movie “Repo Man” where Emilio Estevez wanders into a bar and sees the Circle Jerks doing their songs in a bossa nova unplugged vein and looking disgusted mutters “I remember when I used to like these guys”.  At 17 I completely related to that.  The idea that these great punk bands would give up the anger seemed really sad.  I was also a member of a pretty meaningless punk band, The Scum Monkeys.  Earlier this week I took to a stage in downtown Halifax, solo and sang a bossa nova version of Wild in the Streets.  Obviously 23 years takes a person on a different course and age opens the mind up a bit more but I still assert that the young 13 year old who discovered punk set the course for the rest of my life.  From my earliest memory, music was always really important.  I danced around listening to the Beach Boys as a 7 year old imagining all these cool cars that they drove and sang about, Boney M’s Nightflight to Venus was an amazing song for an 8 year old obsessed with Star Wars.  Sometime around age 12 I discovered Iron Maiden from my brothers album collections and instantly I was a heavy metal fan.  That lasted exactly one year.  One day a kid in school brought in a cassette his brother had brought back from Germany.  He had been stationed over there and obviously exposed to a bit more music than was readily available in rural Saskatchewan.  The band was 999 and holy hell it blew me away.  These were good songs, they were snotty, they were simple and they were about something.  This was the rebellion I was looking for.  At lunchtime that day there were five of us instantly converted.  The rest of the school were highly unimpressed.  We all instantly set out to find out more about this band and other bands like them.  There must be more.  None of us had given punk any thought until that point but instantly memories of reading things in music magazines started to seep in.  We vowed to all start buying whatever we could next time our families went to the city.  We started shouting out bands like Sex Pistols, The Clash, Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedys.  Within a year our little group of music fans had collectively amassed a pretty impressive pile of music.  It was our lives.  Obviously at some point the idea came about that we should start a band.  That was the whole idea of punk, DIY.  The problem was none of us knew how to play or owned any instruments.  We set about deciding who would play what, I went for the bass ’cause it seemed like it might be simpler.  A few months later there were four of us (the fifth had dropped out of school and moved to the city) and we had a band.  Well we had instruments.  We spent every weekend learning how to play these things we bought.  My bass came from the basement of an elementary school teacher.  It was a Fender Precision Bass copy, a Garnet, made in Winnipeg so you knew it had to be good.  It was also really heavy, like seriously heavy.  It bruised my shoulder but it was badass looking and dammit I played the hell out of it.  The only problem with our punk band was that neither of our guitar players had any distortion pedals so all the guitars were pretty clean sounding.  Not nearly mean enough, luckily there were other settings that created a weird swampy psychedelic effect.  It was around this time we started broadening our musical taste to the point of anything not being listened to by our townfolk was probably good.  Bob Dylan came into rotation a lot, The Cramps, The Velvet Underground and the Smiths.  Screw distortion this stuff was cutting edge enough, that’s what we’d do.  We ended up learning a few songs and were well on our way to forging a good sound sans distortion.  Then one of our guitar players showed up with a distortion pedal he’d bought in Regina and it kicked ass.  Screw all that new sound stuff, we were a punk band.  This discouraged our other guitar player enough for him to quit.  He’d started liking country music anyway.  We were a 3 piece and we were still awful.  We kept at it though as an excuse for something to do.

“No Contest” was a festival cooked up by the University of Regina Students Union where they would invite 7 local unsigned bands to play one night at the campus pub.  Holy crap, we needed in on that.  We started recording our stuff feverishly so we could get a demo tape to submit to this.  This was our dream.  This was also the lowest point in the bands history.  Our drummer was not very good and he admitted it but he was a better singer than all of us.  We brought in a guy who was a few years older who could actually play drums really well.  The only problem was that he only really liked Van Halen and wasn’t too into this punk stuff we were trying to do but I think he was just bored enough to amuse us.  He actually started getting into it and we started getting better, like actually sounding like a band.  To this day I never underestimate the power of a good drummer to save a band.  He started suggesting we change our name though, the day he rolled up and screamed “I got it!  The Decibel Demons” we knew we’d made a horrible mistake and told him it wasn’t working.  We were back at it trying to get our asses up on this stage to be discovered and end up touring with The Dead Kennedys or Minor Threat.  What we finally submitted was a godawful three song demo that was about 5 minutes of pure noise, screaming followed by some sort of bizarre surfing song.  We submitted it and years later one of the guys who recieved the tape admitted to me that it was head and shoulders the strangest thing any of them had ever heard.  The fact we were from a small town got us noticed.  A year later that weird demo would serve us well.

The Acid Test Pt 2 and an introduction to Uxbridge

Everytime I find I have bad neighbours I recall the time when I was one of them. I lived in a place for awhile that no sane human would want to live near. We were horrible. Shameful in retrospect but we had fun. At some point in time in the mid nineties several of us moved into a place on Uxbridge Drive NW that became known simply as Uxbridge House. Clever eh? It was a duplex, not far from the University of Calgary. This would’ve been handy if any of us had actually been students. It was essentially a 4 bedroom place. It was big but not big enough to handle the 9 people who eventually lived there. It was a floating cast of characters. At one point in time we had a guy living in the garage and another paying 40 bucks a month to camp in our backyard. There were families next door! I feel somewhat ashamed to have been a resident there, but what’s done is done. We had big parties and a litany of musical instruments in the basement. We were loud. There were medical students living next door. Needless to say, we weren’t popular with them either. Of course that didn’t stop a few of us from trying to get on with them. They were serious medical students but they also happened to be kinda hot. That didn’t work out either. The Uxbridge House lasted probably a good three years but the effects on the neighbourhood lasted a good four years. I’m quite sure home values did drop in the area. About halfway through the first year, a douchey sports bar opened up right across the street. Moose McGuires. We mocked it mercilessly and occasionally egged the hell out of the place until we realized it might actually be handy to have a bar across the street, so we became regulars. “The Uxbridge Dust Bunny” was a term coined by someone to refer to the empty cans of Pilsner you’d find in the oddest places, like in the sofa cushions or in bathroom cupboards or sometimes in the shower. This was the scene I lived in. This was a scene of bad decisions. Only paying 100 dollars a month rent, it afforded me the luxury of only really needing to work a few days a week at the radio station and still having enough disposable income to be an idiot. Drugs of all kinds were also never in short supply, one summer we had a lot of mushrooms around. I think one of our hippie friends had just arrived from BC with several pounds in a backpack. That was the beginning of an odd summer. Jerry Garcia had died so we decided to have some sort of tribute to him, burning a giant effigy in the backyard. None of us actually seemed to like the Grateful Dead but that didn’t stop us from burning shit. At least twice a week we’d gobble down a few grams of mushrooms and set out on some expidition of weirdness. Unfortunately one of our roommates came into a few sheets of acid that summer. This is where it went horribly wrong. You know that moment when you’re coming down off something and your judgement is just a little off? Well that’s the time some jackass would suggest we drop acid. That usually happened around 3 in the morning, so by noon the next day you’re sitting on the couch in a total daze because you’ve been high for a good 14 hours straight. The first few times were fun, the last 5 five were not. Now I know you’re wondering why I’d keep taking acid after even 2 bad consecutive trips? I have no reasonable answer to that. The last 5 times were full of intense paranoia and generally unhappy hallucinations. I remember the 5th time well, it was the last time. I had decided to get out of the house to calm down a bit, still raging at 11am. I boarded a train to go downtown and found myself in downtown Calgary at lunchtime on a Wednesday. Here were a few hundred thousand people going on about thier day as though nothing were wrong. I was out of my head on acid. Then it hit me, my life might be getting slightly off track. This is not normal. I shouldn’t be high on a Wednesday at lunch. I came home with a bucket of KFC to contemplate what I had just realized. Then fell asleep. I haven’t taken LSD since that day and it took me a good 15 years to attempt to eat KFC again.

The Acid Test

My relationship with LSD was a relatively short but complicated one. Being the adventurous one I always knew I wanted to try it, and given it’s non addictive qualities it became even more appealing. I am fully aware of my addictive personality. My lifelong battle with coffee and cigarettes is testament to that. The night I first tried it probably should’ve been the last but something about being in your mid 20’s you adopt the “I’ll try anything twice” mentality. I bought it off a junior coworker and set out for home. In my mind I mapped out the things I probably shouldn’t have access to. Phone, sharp instruments and Russian novels were at the top of the list. Then I set out to think of what I should have. I was pretty much unsure of that, knowing what I knew about the drug I probably didn’t need much. My friend was also coming by, he informed me he’d bring some movies. Fine, I thought, that should do the trick. By the time supper rolled around we decided it was time. After the phone was unplugged, door to the apartment blocked by several chairs presumably to keep others out and us in, and all sharp objects hidden we took the acid. Nothing happened. Like, seriously, nothing. After a half an hour we got bored and started watching Kids in The Hall. For some reason I found them funny when I was 24. About halfways through the first episode they became seriously funny. Hysterical almost. Like most slacker types of the time we dabbled in philosophy. Our minds became instantly blown by one sketch that involved the playing out of “God Is Dead” as though it were a crime scene and that God was a very small person. We didn’t believe we’d actually seen the God is Dead Skit for several years because it never appeared on any of the reruns. It was 10 years later when I finally saw it again. Wasn’t nearly as funny. It was during “God is Dead” that the acid really kicked in. I wish I could detail more of what happened but a few hours (maybe minutes) played out like this: watched Ren and Stimpy and cried because we felt we’d ignored our dental health, tried to roll cigarettes but tobacco was going right through our hands and that was probably not cool, then clung to the sofa trying not to fall off. An interesting thing happens several hours into the “trip” you start to come down, not far, but far enough that it seems like you have a handle on the world again. That’s when we decided to head out into the world. We probably shouldn’t have done that. A few blocks away we saw a giant light and started to walk towards it, drawn by the warm energy in the late night empty downtown Calgary streets. When we got a block away from this light we started thinking perhaps it was the police setting up a light to draw in all the people who were high. That would’ve been a sure fire way to get arrested so we ran screaming. Yes, literally screaming. Our logic wasn’t sound. After a few minutes we hid in an alley and decided the only thing that could save us from certain peril was to eat something pink. If we were smarter we might have seen the obvious connotations to that and headed off to the meat market but instead we decided a trip to Mac’s was in order. We found pink ice cream! We found pink ice cream! Yeah that did the trick. Ignoring the fact that it was insanely cold out at the time we sat on 4th Ave and tried to scour down the ice cream. This of course caught the attention of one of the hobos who hang out in that part of town. Seeing us as a kindred spririt he sat between us and tried to get our ice cream, trying to tell a story. All the while, we were fixated on his ancient braces. Giant elastics in his mouth, covered in food particles. This was enough to trigger more tears. We gave him the ice cream and promptly went home. We must’ve ordered a pizza because the next morning I woke up and found half a pizza hidden under the kitchen sink. I can only assume one of us developed a hoarding instinct and thought we might need it for later. That morning I tried to make coffee. I poured 4 scoops of coffee into the pot, and filled the filter with water. This wasn’t going to work. Once again I cried.

Broadview, Saskatchewan 1970

Good lord, it was like another planet.  40 years ago in rural Saskatchewan might as well have been some sort of Planet of the Apes alternate universe.  There were almost no similarities to my current reality and the world I was brought into.  I used to think Little House on the Prairie had quite a contemporary vibe to it.  I somehow stumbled my way through the last 40 years from Broadview, Saskatchewan to present day Halifax, Nova Scotia.  I’ve always lacked the foresight to see things coming so life has been full of surprises.  Some good, some bad, most were just weird.

There was nothing terribly unique about Broadview, Saskatchewan in the 70’s as far as prairie towns go.  It had the usual fare of one grocery store, a Chinese restaurant, a few gas stations and a rotting old movie theatre.  It also boasted a far better Massey Ferguson dealership than the one in neighbouring Whitewood according to my dad.  What was odd I guess is that the hospital in Broadview was located just a few feet outside the incorporated town limits in 1970.  According to my birth certificate I was not born in Broadview.  I was born in Sec. 26, Tp. 16, Rge. 5, W. 2.  According to my birth certificate I was born in a field.  These are the geographic markers farmers use to legally define their fields.  Now my parents both insist I was actually born in an honest to goodness hospital but I’ve never bothered to check it out.  I accept the story of the hospital being just outside town limits because I probably wouldn’t want to know what kind of horror would’ve been involved in a field birth.  Although, as if to make it a pure prairie birth, me coming into the world did involve farm equipment.  For obvious reasons I have to accept the second hand stories about my birthday in March of 1970.  It was apparently snowing.  Dad’s optimistic description of any winter day was “40 below and a helluva wind”.  It was that kind of day.  Our farm was conveniently located several miles out of town and we had no phone or running water (I’ll get to that later).  I can imagine it was just the perfect situation to be imminently pregnant.  When the magical time came, the roads were drifted over and basically impassable.  Luckily having access to large farm equipment gets around that problem.  A tractor can get through pretty much anything if driven right.  As I’m told, early in the evening Dad started up the tractor (with no heat) and hauled my mother up to sit on the back and they made the trek towards Broadview. I can imagine the journey probably took a few hours and involved a lot of cursing. My mother has never been one to keep her disdain of the inconveniences of life to herself.  In all the movie and television scenes involving an imminent child birth I have never seen anything that involves a tractor lumbering towards the emergency room doors.  I imagine a scene of nurses and doctors waiting anxiously by the emergency room doors for a glimpse of the tractor heading towards them through the blizzard.  The reality is the doctor was home watching hockey and got a phone call to deliver a baby.  To which he probably replied “As soon as Montreal scores I’ll head over.”  He wasn’t a great doctor.  Broadview rarely attracted the best and brightest.    Meanwhile at the hospital my mother was still busy cursing dad out for taking the wrong road into town.  I’m sure that discussion carried on right up until 3am on March 22nd when I was born.  And then carried on for the next day or two as well.

My name is Robert Sydney Johnson.  I was born on March 22nd, 1970 just outside of Broadview, Saskatchewan.  Sydney was my dad’s name.  Robert came about mostly on a whim.  By this time my parents had already named four other children and likely were fresh out of ideas.  The best they had come up with was Brian but my mom didn’t want my initials to be BJ.   I had no name for a few days while my parents thought back and forth on this.  Actually for 8 days I had no name.  I’m sure I was okay with it at the time.  Finally when I likely had to be legally registered somewhere a nurse pressed them on it.  Eventually my mom admitted that she couldn’t come up with a good name.  The nurse said that if she ever had a son she wanted to call him Robert.  I guess it clicked and mom said “yeah that’s good enough, let’s go with that”.  With a phallic last name already I should be thrilled that Dick wasn’t an option.  About 5 years later that nurse did have a son and named him Robert.  I used to tease him that I stole his name until the day he came on the school bus with his face covered in hundreds of small cuts.  When I asked him what happened he told me he spit on a lightbulb and it exploded.  The poor fucker had enough troubles so I let it go.

Radio Intro

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I spent way too much time alone as a kid.  I didn’t really have a lot of choice in the matter though.  Everyone was busy as hell either being a teenager or trying to run the farm that was apparently driving us into an even poorer house.  It was up to me to keep myself entertained.  Somehow I became weirdly fascinated with radio. It wasn’t that I particularly liked the music on the radio. Actually I mostly hated it. From age 8 to about 13 I loved metal, at about 13 I discovered The Clash and The Sex Pistols and my musical world changed forever.  The radio, however, still kept my fascination.  It wasn’t about the content so much as it was the idea of somewhere else.  Late night AM radio was my thing.  I later found out what I was doing actually was called DXing and there are countless lonely nerds still doing it in bedrooms all over the world.  I’d sit close by my radio and slowly scan the dial listening for stations from all over the western US.  Somehow these places seemed really exotic and alluring and I wanted to be there instead of on this shitty farm in the middle of nowhere.  Now it seems pretty ludicrous that I was listening to a station in Omaha, Nebraska and wanting to be there.  But at the time, hell yeah, that would’ve been an improvement.  At least there were people around.  So I’d spend most nights scanning around and seeing what I could find.  I kept a log of these stations and when I found out where they were I’d go to our ancient encyclopedia set that my parents had bought from some travelling salesman in the 60’s and read up on the city.  To this day I know really arcane facts about places like Omaha, Minneapolis, Denver, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Chicago, Indianapolis and Sacramento.  All thanks to the encyclopedia.  I’d like to say that once I got my drivers license and we moved off the farm this stopped.  That marked the end of a lot of nerdy childhood hobbies but not DXing.

Last night I was amused that I got the same smile I did when I was 10 as I flipped around the dial and picked up a station in Charlotte, NC.  Holy shit, that’s a long ways from here.  Streaming radio online has really taken the fun out of DXing.  When I accidentally found myself working at a radio station in Regina several years later on the overnight show I often thought about who might be listening far away.  Maybe there was some kid in the wilds of southern Wyoming who suddenly picked up 620 AM in Regina, Saskatchewan and thought, hmmm, I wonder what that place is like?

Happiness

Someone actually loves me.  That’s an accomplishment, right?  Well your family is pretty much a given, but having someone outside of that circle actually love you is an accomplishment.  That there is a person out there who thinks of you often.  Feels sad when you’re not there.  Feels joy when you’re there.  And you love them back in the same way.  It’s perfect.

Through all the blunders, missteps, mistakes and bad decisions I’ve made in life I can’t put into words how it makes me feel.  A thought bubble might work?