This came from a Facbook game. I was given an age by my friend Kelly because I liked her similar post where someone gave her an age and she wrote about what her life was like then.
My age is 22
At age 22 on this date it was 1996 and I was in the middle of experiencing the worst year of my life up until that point. I was living in my first apartment in Denton, TX called Campus Square, a short walk from the University of North Texas (UNT). I lived in apartment number 316. I paid $300 a month. All the apartments were studios with enough room for a bed and that’s it. Utilities were paid by management and cockroaches were complimentary.
In the Fall of 1995, my step father had a major midlife crisis, was suicidal and decided to leave without telling anyone where he was going. He left my mother with his failed business and the mountain of debt he accumulated. She had been paying my college tuition and letting me live in their gorgeous home in Plano, TX while I pursued my degree in music. She tracked down my step-father in Florida and convinced him to return to Texas to clean up his mess. He eventually found work in Vegas and they moved there in February of 1996. I moved to Denton into my first apartment, not sure how to get back into school.
I made $6.50 an hour working at Computer City as a sales associate, which is a fancy way of saying “guy who puts computer parts on a shelf.” The store was a 45 minutes drive south of Denton. An hour with traffic. I learned how to build computers there and I built my first PC from used parts I had stolen from the store slowly over the course of several months. I enjoyed that computer for about three weeks and then sold it for $1000. I needed money for tuition and car maintenance. This was the last time I was able to afford having any work done on my first CRX. It slowly fell apart after this and stopped driving in 1998. In May 1999 I was able to buy my 2nd CRX for $1200, which lasted until 2004.
If my car had broken down in 1996, or if I needed any kind of medical treatment, everything would have ground to a halt. I had no health insurance and just barely enough money to pay rent. In fact, my willingness to steal from my employer is the only reason I was able to resume school. I qualified for student loans, but I had to pay to enroll first and get reimbursed later. I paid the bare minimum needed to enroll.
I did have my favorite Aunt still living in Texas, but she was moving to California. She was my oasis that summer. I would spend weekend with her and Uncle Neal. They would take me to eat and see movies. I would sleep on their couch and listen to her cat Punk go “Mukkkaaow! Mukkkaaow!” until Neal would run out in his underwear, throw a shoe at him and go to bed. Punk waited until Neal got back in bed before letting out his final “Mukkkaaow!” and go to sleep on my head. Being with them that summer was the only time I was guarenteed to laugh, have fun and forget about the huge knot I carried in my gut all the time. I’ll always be grateful to them for that.
My high school girlfriend back in California, who I was not yet over, had her first serious and long term boyfriend since we broke up. She called me often that summer and would talk about him. Like an idiot wanting to be punished, I would listen to her tell me in detail EVERYTHING about her new relationship. I’d hang up the phone and cry a lot. Part of me knew that it was best we broke up, but I really missed her. Feeling like she was over me, while I ovbviously was not over her, crushed me inside. I was not in a rational place at that time to properly question why she felt the need to call me every other day. But I was naive. It wouldn’t be until a few years later that I would realize that she might have not been over me either.
In the summer of 1996, Dallas got a new radio station. It was commercial free and played nothing but Beatles’s music. It only lasted about a year but it was amazing. Non-stop Beatles. I listened 24/7. I didn’t own a TV and could not afford to replace my tape deck. So this station was all I had. It was called FAB-105.
It was this summer that I bumped into my future wife at a grocery store. I had met her in band in 1994 but lost track of her and all the people I had met that year. Then, one day in 1996 I was at Kroger Supermarket buying food and I saw her. She said hello and introduced me to her fiance, Jason, who would stand behind me in the trumpet section later that fall.
I was living on a steady diet of rice and beans. I bought pinto beans and long grain rice in giant 50 lb bags. I bought fresh produce when it was cheap and stewed it, froze it or both. I kept a notebook of the price of all cheap goods and broke them down by calories per dollar. I listed my target “buy” price and would buy as much as I could afford when the price was below a certain amount. Twenty pounds of potatoes for $2? I’d buy three bags and roast, bake, boil, mash…you name it. I hardly ever ate meat because it was too expensive.
I still had a 24 Hour Fitness membership that my mother had pre-paid the year earlier. Working out kept me sane. I could spend a few hours each night burning off steam instead of being alone in my apartment depressed. I was very fit, in the best shape of my life and yet too depressed and broke to date anyone. Well, later that fall I did date one girl who lived in my building. Her name was Evelyn. Really really hot girl. She was the first girl to give me the green light for sex where, instead of going for it, I got up and left. My instincts told me the girl was unstable and it was not worth it. Boy was I right. A few days later she shtupped some other guy in our building and he said she cried afterward. Religious nut. Apparently she would do guys, cry after sex and then be a stalker for a few months before repeating the cycle. Wow! Dodged that bullet.
Speaking of bullets, a co-worker drove to Denton to go out drinking with me. I could never afford to go out like that, but he was buying. We walked to Cool Beans on Fry Street and ordered two Texas Teas (Like a Long Island Ice Tea) because they were cheap and big. We grabbed our drinks, went through the side door and walked up the outside stairs to their patio on the roof. Half way up the stairs we hear “pop pop pop pop…” Bret and I thought we heard firecrackers, so in a thick Scottish accent (he was Scottish, by the way) we both yell, “Geeetim! Shoot’em in the Foookin HEED!” We looked over the stairwall into the back lot just in time to see a kid holding a .22 caliber at a man’s head. He fired two more shot, “pop pop” and the man fell to the ground. The gunman ran off. We stood frozen for a second, looked at each other and Bret said, “We were just kidding!” and we both laughed hysterically. We finished walking up the stairs and stood, drinking and watching, while the paramedics tried to save the dead guy. Meanwhile, college girls sobbed in horror over the the death of someone they didn’t know and never met. Bret got into an argument with one of them because they didn’t appreciate how cavalier we could be about witnessing a murder. “Have you ever seen anyone die?” The girl asked in her tearful attempt at rhetoric. Bret replied, “You mean other than seeing this guy get shot in the head just now? Well, I gunned down over 20 Iraqis in Operation Desert Storm. It still haunts me to this day. So don’t tell me how traumatized you are because some drifter got shot on the same block as you while you were safe up here with your cocktail cockteasing these rednecks.” That shut her up.
Other than the occasional drink with a co-worker, I was terribly lonely and had lost track of all the friends I had made in college the previous year. I was fighting constant fatigue and found it nearly impossible to wake up in the morning. I requested all the late shifts at work because I knew I could not wake up early. This would eventually cause me to fail entire semesters of school. That and having to work full time while doing a full load of classes. It was not until 2010 that I was finally diagnosed with a deviated septum, had it fixed and realize that lack of oxygen while asleep was the cause of my lifelong sleep/fatigue problems.
It was August 1996 that my friend from high school, Troy, decided to move to Texas and try to enroll in my college. He moved into my apartment building and got a job as a pizza delivery boy. Fucker made more than me! Troy turned around my mood. He was in a similar depressed state like me. Being around each other was mutually beneficial. We were able to lean on each other and keep us from instinctively isolating ourselves the way introverts do when they are in a bad state. Suddenly I had a pal again. We walked to the store and shared a loaf of 89 cent fresh-baked french bread after eating fistfulls of free cookie samples. We talked computers. We talked music. We cracked jokes. We learned how to bake bread from scratch and shared tips on how to eat well on pennies a day. By February of 1997, he and I were sharing a two bedroom apartment a block away that we affectionately called “The Lab” because we were both such nerds.
August 1996 I finally quit Computer City and took a job at Bank of America in Denton at this supermarket branch that was just a desk and an ATM. That experimental branch lasted 6 months. They gave me the option to be laid off or transfer to a branch 60 miles from where I lived. I chose the lay off and got a job on campus at the computer music lab. It was there that I learned Photoshop, thus sparking the beginning my future career in multimedia.
August 1996 I was getting ready to start college again and was very close to getting back into marching band. There I befriended my wife’s future ex-husband. My friendship with him put me back in touch with Misty and all of her friends who I had met in 1994.
As bad as that year was, there would be an even worse year centering around 2002-2003 on its way. It’s the bad years that prepare you for the worse year. It’s hard times that make you strong and make you figure out what you want to do. Wind makes trees stronger. Every incident from 1996, or any other year, provided me with joy, inspiration or a life lesson. I wouldn’t trade away 1996, or 2002-2003, for anything. They were years of growth and challenge peppered with fun and joy.
As life should be.
Comedy | crjoker | 
November 23, 2011 9:26 pm | 
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