They Called Me Spock

The focus of today's entry has to do with how people in general react to me. Alan of Heinovision fame and Gus have expressed an interest in what I write here. Evidence of this can be seen in their recent posts to the diary-l list. This caused me to spend part of the morning thinking about how to react to their comments. Its strange, because I have never met them yet they took the time to write me and give me some very colorful comments. People do it every day on the web, but it took me by surprise I guess. This journal is my little creation after all and I am a little protective of it. Plus Gus says on his page that he likes to do things to see how people react. Maybe I am paranoid I just don't know. Then again I do give people the benefit of the doubt.

I like to think that my writing does reflect who I am. The reader just has to dig beneath the surface a little. I am not the most outgoing of people by any means. I can as the trite saying goes count the number of close personal friends on one hand.

People have always reacted very strangely to me. When I was fourteen my parents decided to move. They relocated the family from Milwaukee to a small town of about a thousand people. So there I was at fourteen, the new kid in town in a high school of four hundred people. All of these people knew one another for years and many of them were related. Then I appeared on the scene. The smart kid from Milwaukee taking advanced classes. Ah, the gossip was all over the school.

It took me about a year to really start to feel comfortable there. I had no idea what group of people that I should call my friends. In the end it was the theatre people that claimed me for one of their own. Yes, we were weird together.

Somewhere in there two people decided to call me Spock. It really didn't bother me. I took it in stride. The two people who used it had their own insecurities of course. One guy had the last name of Beaver. I don't think that I need to say anymore about him. The other guy had a perm in high school which was way unhip in small town America. They were Beavis and Butthead in reality. The nickname soon lost its charm for them and ended as suddenly as it began.

I am not going to say that high school was the worst time in my life or anything like that. I am not mentally scarred or traumatized. High school was just high school. I did the usual high school things like standing in a field drinking beer and smoking pot. I went to movies and hung out. At the end of my three years there I was fairly acclimated. People knew me and I had my own little social circle.

Now I am going to backtrack even further to my first high school in Milwaukee, the one that I attended my freshman year. Droopy was the nickname that I had been given by my shop class. Everyone at the Milwaukee high school thought that I was on drugs. This was untrue, but very few people believed me. More than one person asked me to get them something or other. The truth was that I wouldn't try pot until a few years later. The bags under my eyes were a combination of baby fat and allergies. This all changed in a few years when my face lengthened and matured.

So what is the point that I am trying to make here. Well, very seldom do people know how to react to me. Even when people do know me they have a hard time knowing when I am serious and when I am joking around. People will form their opinions of me. Sometimes they are good and sometimes they are not. Its simple really. Acknowledge, move on.

Just to prevent any misunderstanding I am not, I repeat not, calling Alan and Gus Beavis and Butthead. Although I have a feeling that they have been called far worse things by other people. They both have very complex journals of their own (Alan has recently discontinued his site) and I respect their feedback.

On the home front, I did go visit my parents today and do my laundry. It was a full house. My brother was back in town for the weekend and both of my sisters were home as well.

It was a completely lazy day there like always.

There was some talk about me finding a girlfriend, but that is a topic for tomorrow or another day. I want to end this entry on a happy note.

My little niece who is sixteen months old is going to be a M&M candy this Halloween. She looked so cute in her costume. Her choice of color is blue.