May 17, 1997 - Moving Day & Saying Goodbye to Merrill

Cutter's Log - Stardate 2102.31.40
Current Song - Daisy Jane (America)

It's 4 in the morning. Everyone's asleep everywhere. In my office hallway, in front of my computer, a light on a lamp post gives me the room to see.

On my desk is a stapled pile of papers. They contain many phone numbers. Numbers of places I have either been to, or never seen with my own two eyes before. But these numbers contain the key toward getting myself living again. I made some calls yesterday, and will try to continue today. But pretty much my life rests within these phone numbers, and an outside effort to reclaim the position that I was once at.

So here I am, with this packet of paper with phone numbers listed. This is pretty tight space that I'm working with, but this is the only space I have been restricted to in these past seven months.

My only links to everything else outside of this tight-bubbled quarters I have been shoved in are the memories of what life used to be like for me.

There was a time when I was much happier than how I am feeling now. When I think back to those times, and consider the position I find myself in now, I can only cry and tell myself that I'm nothing more than a shadow of what I used to be.

There was a time when I was destined to be really, really smart and had a great education and everything else like that. I can think back to my grade school days, when I started on my homework before everyone else (first grade), wondered why 55+55 didn't equal 1010 (second grade), knew all of the presidents both in order and backwards, and crushed my classmates in the "around the world" math game.

I was "the smart one" back then. Not only was I smart, but I had friends that I could play with and talk to - about anything. I miss those grade school days at Merrill. I never had any problems with depression, or trying to find a girlfriend, or anything like that.

I am crying and my head is rattling at this moment. That's because the memory of saying good-bye after 4th grade just came into my head. My family made the decision to move from Rock Falls to Sterling - and it was the right move, as we were now owning our own home. But we had to move away to do that. It was the best move for our family, but it was one that I'll never forget.

My best friend Jared and I had been in the same class every year from when I arrived in first grade to leaving after fourth grade. We lived across the street from each other for a while before he moved to another house in the same school boundary. Our neighborhood was full of many kids: Jared and Larelle, the Nance's (Alesha and Dan), the Williams's (Matt, Sara and Billie), the Risley's (Stephanie and Jeremy), the Mattox's (Mason and his little brother), the Pinkston's (Aaron and Chrysteena), the Limond's (Wesley and David), the Berogan's, Hay's and Claudin's to name a few more.

Along with some of them, and other friends from school, we would always be somewhere around the West side of town (as "crossing First Avenue" was a no-no for us back then). The baseball games in my back yard, where balls hit over the garage would be a home run (first base was the tree, second base was the garage door, and third base was a pile of sticks). The baseball games on the Sega (World Series Baseball) and Super Nintendo (Ken Griffey Baseball). The two-headed tree that all we needed was just a jump to be in the wedge between the branches.

It took me many years to realize that my parents were very happy to see me in the position I was in while living in Rock Falls. I had mild autism when I was very young, and all of this friendship interaction pretty much made the coping process better. Every day I was doing something after school, until dark.

First grade was when I learned that girls were indeed quite alright, and not full of cooties. Jared, ever so wise beyond his seven years, suggested that I call up the girl I liked on the telephone. First grade. I was always nervous to tell her, and I think she found out though Jared. Liking girls was all a part of life back then. Each one of us that "saw the light" (I think only a few) when it came to girls had that one girl we liked. In contrast, all of the girls had that one guy they liked (either Zach or Jake).

Merrill had Mrs. Dady and Mr. G. You cannot find a better music/gym combination on the planet! These years were when computer software for kids was starting to come out (on the small Macintosh's) such as Putt Putt and Fatty Bear, and Turbo Math. Turbo Math was the computer game where, if you got a math question correct a drag racer flew across the screen (and if you got a problem wrong, the drag car would crash at the end of the screen). Turbo Math was the game where I couldn't quite understand why 55+55 didn't = 1010. I was the first person, according to my second grade teacher Miss Last, that was taught to "carry the one" before the rest of the class did.

Lunch was in the basement, and I can still hear the "bang, bang" of lunch trays and scrap food going into the garbage.

Those were the days.

Then in the middle of fourth grade, my world turned upside down. We were moving to Sterling, and I was going to attend Lincoln Elementary in Sterling.

As the weeks toward the big day came closer, I began to understand that I can't cross the bridge on my bike and come see my friends again. This bothered me a lot.

Then the final day came. My bedroom was empty, as was my little brothers'. We had a connecting walk-in closet between our rooms. I wanted to hide and never come out. I laid on my stomach and saw my life passing me by. I cried.

Goodbye, Jared. Goodbye, Jake. Goodbye, Matt. Goodbye, Geoff. Goodbye, Emily. Goodbye, Mallory. Goodbye, Emily. Goodbye, Kody. Goodbye, Steven. Goodbye, Alesha. Goodbye, Dan. Goodbye, Brendyn. Goodbye, Johnna. Goodbye, Alisha. Goodbye, Kal. Goodbye, Antoino. Goodbye, Austin. Goodbye, Mason. Goodbye, Keelin. Goodbye, Zach. Goodbye, Sarah. Goodbye, Nicole. Goodbye, Jacob. Goodbye, Chris. Goodbye, Aaron. Goodbye, Ryan. Goodbye, Cassie. Goodbye, Stephanie.

I thought of every classmate one-by-one. And I cried doing so.

Then my parents found me, and I tried to hold back the tears as I took that last walk out of the house. As we pulled away on 5th Street, we went past 2nd Avenue and I caught a glimpse of the Pinkston house, where I had spent many days at. It was at that point that my life would never be the same.

I don't remember how I told everyone in the fourth grade, but they all knew by year's end that I wasn't going to be in fifth grade at Merrill. The first time I uttered it in class was the last day of school. Mrs. Sickler had read off the list of kids that were going to be in either Mrs. Gallardo or Mr. Stralow's classes. Jared's name was listed in one of those classes, and I remember him telling Mrs. Sickler that his family was actually moving to somewhere near Montmorency School. I recall a tear coming down his face as he said something to the tune of "I'm going to miss everyone."

My name wasn't on the fifth-grade roll. "Are you moving too?" someone told me. I just simply said a "yeah".

Our moving day was May 17. We still had two weeks left of school, so I was already in my current house on that fateful last day of school. By then, I had gotten over the biggest heartache of my life.

"You'll get to make new friends" was the theme of that first year at Lincoln. I only had two Merrill links (Brandon and Stacie) at Lincoln. As these years piled up, it was difficult to make new friends as I had missed my old ones. Eventually it takes time, and I had plenty by high school.

Heck, I even got to see my old Merrill classmates once again - now that I realized that, yes, I can cross the bridge any time I wanted to.

But after high school, all of those friends dissapear - off doing their own thing. College kind of helped me somewhat, but in the couple of years after graduating from Sauk, I kind of feel that I'm back to that same "square one" that I was at on May 17, 1997.

A couple of years after I had moved to Sterling, I happened to catch a youth softball ceremony at Wallingford Park. I met up with a couple of my old classmates. I remember one of them (Jake, maybe) talking about how smart I was. The word "Harvard" was mentioned.

15 years later, I am nowhere close to Harvard. Instead, I am looking at a packet with phone numbers on it. Trying to find a job.

And I am still in the same house I moved to 15 years ago.