1. Did everything with this dude, we were 13 and he was black and I was white and we were just starting to get to that point where cultures are crossing and we're really learning stuff about each other. We were at that point where you're sitting in the basement making phone calls to girls out of the school directory trying to meet up and make out at the little league field. Laughing about figuring out how to masturbate.

And then suddenly he's taking a drink of water at the water fountain after lunch at school one moment, on the ground convulsing and then catatonic the next. He wakes up months later and his first wish is to get wheeled over to my house, but all he could ever remember was my house. We hung out and laughed a few times but he could never remember my name or why he wanted to be there so it was always fleeting. Soon he had to move away to an outpatient facility and we've never really been close since (he's gotten better but has like 5% function on the left side of his body).

I miss the shit out of that dude and I've been incredibly retracted from most people I'm associated with now. I am awful at building friendships because I just don't trust that they can last subconsciously.

2. I hated my roommate in Lincoln and left after just one semester with a 0.0 GPA, came back to Omaha and got really into African-American studies and was hanging out with the dean of the department on the regular, learning how to play spades and having really dumb deep dives on the influence of horror movie culture on the rise of groups like Three 6 Mafia in the early 90s. Hit the Dean's List two semesters running, dipped a little, and then suddenly just totally lost the spark and got another 0.0.

Told the good Doctor and he really went to bat for me with the accounts people to give me another shot, and then I 0.0'd again, didn't even go to class past late February-mid March-ish. I never could pick a real direction and was pretty adamant about not being That White Guy That Lectures Black People About Black Experiences, which was just about my only path from what I was on. I don't even know where my debt lies, I think I'm considered deceased to credit companies at this point.

3. Stumbled into (literally, drunk) a job at a bar that grew from weekend door guy to head bartender in a little over a year. Was finally making a livable wage (had a $300 apartment making roughly $38,000 a year), had a really nice girlfriend (in AA which ultimately broke us apart but it was amicable) and was a sort of pillar of my neighborhood, the sort of guy that gets a nod and small talk everywhere he goes. It was the first time since I hit a 31 on my ACT three times in a row (32 would've been a full ride to Nebraska despite my weak high school GPA) that I felt super validated and worth something.

I suppose the less subtle part of that story is when I got really sick this past February, tried to come back too early and forgot to lock the doors/turn the lights off in a haste to get home. I learned a lot about looking a gift horse in the mouth, quickly taking for granted things that are really not all that firmly established. I was the only employee there at the time from outside the circle of folks that first started the place, and ultimately a single huge mistake from me got me ousted without much fuss. I learned as much about hubris as actual confidence, and also what it feels like to go from a sense of advancement (was filing for insurance for the first time, moved into an actual apartment, etc.) to a sense of total desperation in the time it takes to have one phone conversation with the coolest boss you'd ever had.

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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
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