Who I Was and Where I Came From

So, I've taken a couple of months off from blog posting to work on some creative projects. This is a 99.9% true story from back when I was a kid in Sandy, Utah. It's mostly a hodge podge of events that happened in grade school. Hopefully, it gives you an idea of what things were like back then. See for yourself:

Recess

Mike Peterson and I usually played near the big storm grate just behind the batting fence and the swing sets. We were playing Chronicles of Kings. Today we slew a phalanx of orcs. They surprised us in a mountain pass. They were sent to steal back the sacred sword which we recovered from the ruins of Ashtoran, but having the sacred sword made them easier for us to kill, which they, being orcs, hadn’t thought about. A phalanx of orcs wasn’t as big as a horde of orcs, but still. Then we were attacked by a swarm of bees and we ended up starting this float trip thing that involved rafts and aquatic monsters. It was a good story. The idea was to create this epic story that would get expanded with each recess. We were both excited about the rafting thing. We never thought about sea monsters before. It was a good angle.
We were next to the tall metal swing sets that flanked this big triangle area full of pea gravel. There was a jungle gym, monkey bars, parallel bars, the whole thing. There used to be a slide but that got taken out and we never figured out why. The rest of the big yard was just grass with a couple of stands that would’ve been soccer goals if there had any nets. All of the Red Rover kids and the Crack the Whip kids and the Smear the Queer kids were usually over there. I was never a Red Rover kid, but I was sometimes a Crack the Whip kid or a Smear the Queer kid. I’d gotten ahead in Crack the Whip but I never really caught on to Smear the Queer. You picked a kid that nobody liked and you just chased him around. It was mean and we knew that, so we tried to limit how often the game got played. This was before Mrs. Moss said that we couldn’t play it at all any more. Somebody had complained. It was an open secret that Paul Lefferts usually got picked for the queer, so we naturally assumed that he was the whistleblower. But, now Lefferts was targeted even more because now he was a squealer on top of being smelly and always talking with his outdoor voice. I never thought that Lefferts’s mom had thought that through. Now, that this had happened I kind of felt sorry for the guy.
We’re not going to play Smear the Blank any more, Mrs. Moss said.
“Blank” meant that queer was a bad word. I had no idea and I felt instantly ashamed. This was a couple of weeks ago.
Let’s play Sewer Theater, I said to Mike. Sewer Theater was this game I made up where one guy would yell through the big sewer grate near the batting fence and the sound would come through another storm drain that was near the tether ball poles. The idea was to make up a story and yell it through the grate loud enough so that the other guy could hear it. You’d make up part of a story and then the guy on the other end would make up another part so, in the end, you would have a full story before recess was over. I usually made up a lot of sound effects to go with the story, but Mike said that he couldn’t hear them very well through the grate. This just meant I needed to improve the sound effects to compensate for the echo in the drain pipe.
That’s a stupid game, Mike said.
The game had it’s flaws, but I thought calling it stupid was a little off base. We were trying to make memorable narratives here, and Mike wasn’t being very collaborative. Besides, I was the leader of the two of us, and he was just a sidekick. I came up with the big ideas and Mike was there to provide color, charm, embellishment. That was the dynamic that we agreed upon. What was the point of having somebody who had all of the great ideas if no one was there to follow him? The leader needed someone he could rely on to get him out of all of the tough scrapes he got himself into. I had said that Batman would be dead without Robin and without Chewbacca, Han Solo would have no idea how to fly the Millennium Falcon. Mike agreed. We discussed it months ago and he said that he didn’t mind the sidekick role and that he liked the idea.
You’re stupid, I said, shoving him to the ground.
He was smaller than me, so it was a little cheap, but Batman would’ve done the same thing. A leader commands respect.
Jerk, Mike said.
The bell rang. We got all clustered together and pushed our way through the big swinging brown doors that took us into our classrooms. I stood right behind Michelle Perry. I could almost smell that lemony smell in her hair. Michelle was blonde and her hair was pulled to the sides and banded with elastics that had these clear marble things on them. She had pronounced cheek bones and when she smiled her mouth was full of perfect white teeth. She was stunning; second only to Susan Hunter who I was desperately in love with but told no one. It was my secret, this great love. The first day I saw her was on Halloween. She was dressed in these medieval clothes with a golden princess crown and a little plastic sword. She had thick brown hair.
What are you? I asked.
I’m a warrior, she said.
I vowed that day never to tell anyone about her, and I promised to think about her all of the time. I did talk about how I felt about other girls, but not Susan. She was special, while the other girls: Michelle Perry, Roseangel Martinson, Madison Graves, and Emily Fichtner, were just conventionally pretty. I still crushed on them too, but not as intensely. One summer, I pulled Bradley Gumble under this boat that was parked in a neighbor’s drive and told him that all of these girls could never be had by any man. They were all being held captive by some horrible malevolent power similar to the dark side of the force in Star Wars. Only one man could break the spell of this power and then these girls would give themselves totally and unspeakably to that man, effectively becoming his slaves.
What can we do? he said.
He was stunned by this realization. I had told him the big secret. We spent the rest of the afternoon planning how we would each break the spell and become this one man who had absolute power over all of the pretty girls. So far, nothing had worked.
When we were all inside after recess we got to work on this project that involved cutting out pieces of paper and gluing them to colored pieces of cardstock. I always hated these kinds of art projects. I didn’t care about cutting things up in creative ways and gluing them onto whatever we had laying around. That was more of a girl thing. All I wanted to do was doodle in the notepad that I kept in the cubby tray under my desk. I coasted on this cut-and-paste job. I’d cut out one piece and then take a trip to the drinking fountain, cut out another and then go to the crayon bin pretending that I was searching for a peach colored crayon. This ate up enough time.
Our teacher, Mrs. Dehaven, was now standing in the front of the room. She wore a long, brown dress and today her hair was curled and her lipstick was this dark, autumnal looking shade. I remembered hugging her earlier in the year. There was this warm smell that she had. There was a softness in the way that she hugged you. She was wearing these pearl earrings and she started pointing to the board with this long stick using these swift, exacting strokes. It was easy to look at her while she was doing all of this. I probably looked like I was paying attention.
Michael, she said. Did you understand that you have to cut your paper out evenly on both sides so that when you unfold it, you’ll have a leaf shape? I said yes, but she looked like she didn’t believe me.
Then, there was computer class. On good days you could play Oregon Trail. In Oregon Trail, you were trying to get a wagon train to migrate west without the whole group dying of malaria or running out of water or food. This game was nearly impossible and if you played it the right way it was still not very interesting. The only thing worth doing was to buy only guns and bullets at the general store before your wagon trip began. Then you could hunt these animals that ran across the screen with incredible quickness. The game ended early this way because your wagon would break down and you didn’t buy any spare parts at the beginning of the game because you blew it all on guns and bullets. Your whole group died of malaria and you’d lose, but nobody cared. Trying to shoot these impossible to kill coyotes and jackrabbits was the only fun part of the game.
Computers was taught by Mr. France, an overweight guy in his forties with a white beard, who wore pleated grey Dockers with big, white New Balance walking shoes. If you did something wrong he’d call you an idiot and then explain to the class what an idiot was and how you fit really well into his nuanced, intricate definition of an idiot. That day, I was waving my hand in front of the flashing green computer screen so that my hand turned into this mesmerizing green blur if I waved fast enough. This kept me occupied for awhile.
Did you hear me? he said. I turned around to look at him like I had just been awakened from a decade long coma.
Idiot, he said.
After that, we ate lunch. There were pigs in a blanket and mashed potatoes and gravy. Pig in a blanket day was my favorite. They were really good with lots of ketchup that came in these little white cups at the end of the lunch line. I washed all of that down with a little carton of Viva chocolate milk. It used to be that you could never get chocolate milk, only regular, but now they had it all of time so everybody was drinking it. The only kid that didn’t drink chocolate milk was Caleb Beckstead. Caleb said that he didn’t like the taste of chocolate milk and that his mom told him that he was allergic to chocolate milk, but not regular milk. Caleb always wore his glasses at an angle over his nose so that the lenses pointed down at his desk. He said that this was the only way that he could see anything, and that wearing his glasses normally actually made his vision worse than if he wasn’t wearing glasses at all.
I wanted to eat lunch in a hurry, because we had recess right after that. I went through all of the brown halls with the glaring fluorescent lights and the weird orange carpets and I went out the door. Mike was waiting for me at the storm grate.
Hi, I said. Listen, I’m really sorry about earlier. We don’t have to play Sewer Theater anymore. I guess I can’t even hear you all of that well on the other side, so it’s no big deal. Sorry, I pushed you. That was really mean.
Yeah, I don’t want to be the side kick anymore, he said. You came up with Sewer Theater, but we both worked on Chronicles of Kings, and you, me, and Eric Stonehocker all came up with Aliens vs. Predator, because we all read the comic books. I think nobody should be the leader, because we don’t need one. Let’s just all play together, and come up with good stuff.
I said that was a good idea. We did our ritual handshake that involved snaps and fist bumps, and all of that. Nobody knew how to do that but us. Then, Matt Matthews came over to us. He was at least six feet tall with a mouth full of big even teeth and a messy haircut.
Gentlemen, he said in his courtly way. What’re you two doing this fine afternoon? We explained that we were all done with the orcs and the bees and that now we were doing this raft-sea monster thing.
There should be a kraken, he said. We agreed that krakens were cool, but that a kraken was really more of a giant, boss monster that we would have to defeat after fighting a bunch of smaller, less powerful water monsters.
What about piranhas? Matt said. We wrote Matt in as a wayfaring pirate who would show us all of the valuable sea routes for three bags of gold. I ended up destroying the piranhas with the sacred sword, while Mike shot them out of the air with his bow and arrow. Matt had magical thunderbolt so he used that to blast the piranhas off of our little raft.
We forgot to fight the kraken, Mike said.
Next recess, I said. The bell rang.

A Weekend of Successes!

Well, this last weekend, the in-laws and I all took a trip down to St. George to stay at my brother-in-law's swanky timeshare condo. Swanky because I'm on vacation and I'm not in a tent and there's TV. Deluxe! St. George is like Salt Lake's spoiled little sister that isn't as successful as Salt Lake, yet still acts like a totally spoiled brat (only with more golf courses and strip malls). It's the most luxurious thing that's within a day's drive from the city that isn't Vegas or Twin Falls.

I ended up having to go into work early, so we got going a little later than I thought we would, but we still made good time, cruising fast over central Utah's flat, unremarkable prairies. People do well in St. George. The town is surrounded by some picturesque bluffs and boasts a mostly warm climate year round. The landscape is populated with newly built condos, timeshares, hotels and motels by the freeway, cookie-cutter family-friendly restaurants and shops, and sprawling spas probably housing celebrities from LA convalescing from their massively expensive drug addictions, guarded by high adobe walls and dangerous desert plants and patrolled by robotic, night-vision equipped, dobermans. I got to thinking about the real-estate crisis and I wondered how many tracts of houses, maybe whole neighborhoods, stood there brand new and deserted like one of those a-bomb test site facade cities that they built in the 50s. No, nothing of the sort. Business is booming in St. George. I saw a lot of construction on nice looking tax shelters that were probably already bought up by all the nice looking people. Swells, I mean.

Well, today we were the swells. Except, that when we drove up to the brand-new spic and span timeshare development, we found out that my brother-in-law and his family hadn't yet arrived to let us into the place. Good grief! Travel weary, I pulled myself out of the car and into one of the management's buildings to find a place to pee and get a drink of water. Inside, was a burly looking man in his early thirties with a backwards hat and a Minnesota Vikings shirt. This was the weekend of the big annual cross-town football game where The University of Utah would be hosting some little religious school based out of Provo. I had my bright red Utah sweatshirt on and this husky individual approached me and poked a finger into my chest. "You think Utah's gonna win that game?" he asked. "I know so," I said, "BYU's quarterback is used to having a cushy time slot when he's in the pocket, but our pass rush will make short work of that."
"Bullshit!" shouted the hulking neanderthal, his cordiality vanishing like one of the creatine shakes he wolfed down probably twenty times a day. "I used to play football for Vanderbuilt and the CFL. Now, I'm a sportswriter for CBS and I've got a blog and I live in the presidential suite at this here timeshare and who are YOU, buddy." I introduced myself. He kept talking. Talking about himself, his many adventures. I felt suddenly very tired.

Then, he kidnapped me. And he kidnapped my wife and my sister-in-law and he forced us to keep him company up in his hot-shot little presidential suite. He got all het-up on about all the football things he's ever done and football thoughts he's ever had. He was one of those hopelessly extroverted people that always tells you more than you would ever want to know. "I come up here to get away from the wife," he said, clenching and unclenching his massive fists. "Sometimes, I can't stand it when she's around," he confessed to me. I shifted my feet a little. "Maybe, you should see a therapist?" I said.

It was a nightmare. But Amanda was having a great time. She was swept away by this mysterious, psychotic barbarian that lived in the desert. Later, that night, she said that we should go over to his suite AGAIN and maybe see if he had any beer and maybe sit in his hot-tub. Who IS this woman? I can only imagine how that night would've turned out if we had done that. I'd probably watch him crush 57 beers on his forehead and then he'd force feed me Keystone Light until I threw up. Maybe, after that, he would confide to me about his broken marriage and broken dreams. Maybe, he'd cry. Maybe, he'd try to hug me. Thank god, it didn't come to that.

Fortunately, we weren't detained by him for very long. We all beat a hasty exit and went out and got a bite to eat. In a couple of hours the rest of the fam-damily arrived and the requisite commotion for everything got underway. People moving up and down stairs, carrying bags, bargaining, goofing, talking a mile a minute, kids tearing the whole damn place apart. But that all settles down. The evening ended with the kids going to bed, and the grown-ups and teenagers playing board games. Amanda busted out the good bottle of wine like the stand-up dame that she is. I don't know how I'd live without her.

Most of Amanda's brothers and sisters don't drink, but I swear to god they get secretly drunk sometimes. I had a little buzz on and I'm trying to understand this damn crazy game that everybody's playing. They kept giving these answers out that are either secret inside jokes, or they're non-secret outside jokes that I just don't get. They all get very giddy and elated. Naturally high, these people. Maybe we had a gas leak or something, who knows?

The next day we fooled around at the swimming pool and played table tennis in the rec room before going over to a sports bar to watch the big game. St. George, as far as I can tell, is cougar country. But BYU fans are the same everywhere. They're pretty quiet and tend not to cheer very loud for their team. That much happiness can't be moral, can it? The Heavenly Father would probably expect them to guide themselves out of the risky behaviors that are the results of too much mirth and excitement. It could lead to horseplay, and that can lead to harder things. Like dancing. Anyway, I'd be pretty quiet if I was a BYU fan that day, too. Utah put a hurt on the cougs and all of the steroidal maniac's predictions were proved dismally wrong thanks to the Ute's excellent pass rush and stellar defensive backs. Checkmate, random unstable stranger!

The next morning I received a pretty upsetting phone call. My cousin, a troubled fifteen year old living with my father's brother in Illinois, had been killed in a car accident the night before. The last time I saw him was when my grandmother passed away in 2001 and my family made a trip out to Minnesota to pay our respects. He was only eight years old then; cheerful, athletic, exuberant. Everything good about an eight year old boy. I had always thought that some time later down the line I'd see him again. He'd be older and taller. He'd be shy instead of excited to see his older cousin who he hadn't seen in years. He would be starting high school. He'd have a girlfriend, maybe. He'd still play baseball, but more seriously, thinking about his future. I really thought that was a cinch to happen someday. It was a safe inevitability. I just took it for granted.

Later that day, we all got into Amanda's mom's mini-van and went about forty miles east into Zion's National Park. It was a beautiful time to be there. The leaves were turning yellow and red. The sun was just setting over the towering rocks. Everybody else was playing around me, but I started moving inward. It wasn't just about my cousin, but about what a fight it is to be alive anyway. I'm still pretty young and I know for sure that I haven't done everything that I want to do yet. Really, I don't know how to get it done without pulling pieces out of it one at a time. Until, one day I'm sitting in a rocking chair having gotten the whole thing done and over with, and there I am. I don't know how anybody does it. Does anybody really get what they're after, or is it all about the fight to get that thing. Maybe, that's the only thing that really resonates; that's all that matters. I don't know.

I looked up at the tall cliffs; the dying sun casting red onto the towering, indestructible monuments around me. And I thought, as I often do, about ancient people maybe discovering this place. Maybe, a man in the bygone past looked up at the same red rocks that I saw. Maybe, like me, he was filled with fear and wonder. He thought about the menace that nature was, and what a struggle it was just to buy the air to breathe and the food to eat. But that nothing could be more powerful than that instinct to breathe and to eat. And it just didn't matter. The needs of one person, or even very many people, just didn't matter to the secret, evil machinations of nature. At that moment, I knew that I was just as much a man against nature as he was so long ago. And, slowly, carefully, I was walking into the same fire that lent those rocks their beautiful, momentary glow.

ME, ME, ME....

Hello! Thanks for stopping in. Pull up a red velvet wing-backed chair and pour yourself another generous snifter of brandy, while I bore you to death with the details of my long, sad life. My full name is Michael Robert Gillham, and I was born in 1983 in a tiny shit-kicking outpost in middle-of-nowhere Wyoming. My father was a fly-by-nighter whose name I don't know and face I'd never recognize. My mother came from hearty frontier stock and had a passion for cross-stitching, Christianity, chores, and the actor stylings of the late Michael Landon. Not long after my birth, my mother met and married a diminutive yet highly efficient civil servant named Larry Gillham (hereafter referred to as "Dad"), whose name I share. They had one son, who is my half-brother a bespectacled, energetic little hobbit named Jason. And we were accompanied by my half-sister, Sheila, who was from an earlier marriage of my mother's and was several years my senior.
Early in my life, my mother contracted cervical cancer and we had to move to the bustling metropolis of Salt Lake City, Utah (where I still live) so that she could receive the care she needed. Sadly, she passed away from her illness in the fall of 1988, and only a matter of weeks later, Sheila was killed in a tragic shooting accident. This left Mr. Gillham with the burden of raising Jason and I by himself and with very little help.
My dad is an extraordinary parent by any measure. My brother and I ripped each other apart when we were kids and he gave us a very nice home and managed to send us both to a bizarre social experiment that masqueraded as a private high school. On the surface, this school appeared to be a good environment for teenagers; small class sizes, open teaching styles, and strong academics were at all times visible. But, bubbling just beneath the surface, was a conspiracy formulated by the teachers and administration to kill us by subjecting us to backpacking, white-water rafting, and rock climbing in such exotic and dangerous locales as Vietnam, Costa Rica, and Mexico. I was lucky to escape with my life. Others have been less fortunate.
From 2003 to 2007 I attended the University of Utah where I graduated with a BA in English with a minor in keg-stands, football stadium vandalism, plagiarism, and napping. That same year I married a smart and sassy lady named Amanda McFarland and we now live near downtown Salt Lake City in our shoebox apartment with a muskrat/chinaman/dog hybrid named Frida Kahlo. I am a devoted libertarian, an atheist, a vegan, an avid swimmer and runner, a man of letters, and a gentleman and PATRIOT, to the last. I like reading, watching TV, wine, beer, sex, profanity, sleeping, and maybe writing if there's still time.