The Whittier Earthquake, 1985

It was breakfast-time before school. I was at the table eating some cereal and reading the Zelda handbook. (I would not play Zelda again for the next two years.) My mom was preparing her own breakfast. The room started to shake, and though I had never experienced an earthquake before I knew what was happening and I knew what to do. I started to crouch under the big wood table. It had over-sized legs because it was an expandable table, designed to support a large load. My mother, however, had the idea in her head that I needed to be in the door jam with her. I was trying to brace myself when she pulled me from safety and back into the kitchen with its high ceilings and its walls covered in breakable dishes. The cabinet doors opened and closed with the waves of the quake. Plates flew around the room and eventually shattered against the floor. I had small cuts on my hands when the shaking stopped.

The rest of my family was in the rest of the house. After the initial rumbling subsided, the five of us crowded together in the other kitchen door. (How we did this, I do not recall. Five of us? Maybe my dad wasn't there. He sure as hell feels there.) My brother was on the phone with a friend. They were having a great time. I was okay, I guess, because everybody else was there.

Later in the day, my brother and his friend were assigned to watch me. I hadn't gone to school because I was a little freaked out. They were 20 years old and energetic and totally spazzed out. They watched the news about the quake and cheered, while I peeked over the couch at the television news. They gave me an Alka-Seltzer for some reason. I liked it.

Tamu

Tamu was already a part of the family when I was born. She was a Rhodesian Ridgeback with a reputation for eating through walls. One time she growled in my face when I was very small and it scared the living hell out of me.

A couple of years later, on Easter Sunday, she got hit by a car and died. I remember standing at the front door and looking at the car in the street. The light was soft like an old black and white movie, as the morning fog had not yet lifted.

The Boiling Miracle

My dad is a salesman. In the glory days he sold a navy to Saudi Arabia, and by the time I was in elementary school he sold reusable heat pads to nobody in particular. They were really neat little things; liquid-filled plastic pads of various sizes to fit various body parts. Each had a little metal button floating inside, and when you snapped it a chemical reaction would crystallize the liquid and the whole thing would heat up. As the pads cooled they got hard, and all you had to do to reset them was to boil them for about 20 minutes. We had a lot of these heat pads around the house, and it wasn't unusual to have a big pot of boiling water going in the kitchen to reset them. One night my sister started freaking out over a batch and said to me across the kitchen, "Matty! Matty! Come look!!"

After the newly-rejuvenated heat pads had been removed, my sister pulled from the pot a large sea shell. On the outside it was rugged and rocky like the bottom of the ocean. On the inside it was a luminescent rainbow. "Oh my god! Where did it come from?!" my sister cried.

She went on to theorize some magical reason for the shell appearing in our pot of boiling heat pads, and I totally believed her. I started to get scared, even, contemplating the ramifications of such an obviously supernatural event.

After the initial excitement, I put the magical shell in the back of my mind. It was amazing, but for some reason I didn't feel like spreading the story around. Having grown up in the Catholic church, I was simultaneously initiated into the sometimes antagonistic ways of logic and of mystery. To this day I value the scientific method and the power of critical thinking, but I am also willing to accept the possibility, at least, of supernatural explanations.

In this case, looking back, I am fairly certain that the miracle was supplied entirely by my miraculous older sister.

Penis Envy

I was in elementary school and the boys were approaching the hill of puberty. There was one kid in my class who was bigger stronger faster and better coordinated than everybody else. He therefore maintained an enviable status among our peers. In the bathroom one day I was at the urinal and so was he. I happened to glance in his direction and man, his penis was way bigger than mine. I was convinced it was because mine was circumcised. "If I have a boy, I'm not going to get him circumcised," I thought to myself.

In retrospect, I didn't really get that good a look at the kid's junk. He was probably circumcised just like me, and if his penis was in reality bigger than mine it was (and is?) probably due to the fact that his whole body was bigger than mine.

High School Counsleor Meeting

I was in my first year if high school and I was in a meeting. My divorcing parents were there, and so was my counselor. The meeting was happening because I was a screw-up student. The counselor and my mother were debating the nature of my idiocy when my father broke in, "You realize that this kid is smarter than anyone in this room."

He said it earnestly and I believed him. I think my mom and my counselor believed him too. It made me question the institution of high school. If I was so smart, why was I a screw-up?

Plagiarism

I was seven or eight years old. Third grade? Something like that. My class was making a little magazine. It was called the "Just Say No Journal" and everybody got to make something for it - mostly cartoons and stuff like that - all of it united by the theme: drugs are bad.

In my class I was known as a somewhat talented artist, as far as little kids go. I could draw and design posters and stuff. I was in the choir and I played the piano. For that reason, and the fact that I was the only third grader reading Mad Magazine, everybody loved my plagiarized cartoon. It took up the whole back cover. Kids and teachers complimented me on it, and I was really, really humble with my "thanks."

I pretty much just traced the cartoon straight out of Mad. I'm not sure why I did it. I'd never really been one to pass off other people's stuff as my own. I had this one friend who was super smart, and I think he knew, but he never said anything. I felt guilty as hell, I never confessed, and I never got caught.

The Pyramid Dream

I am in Egypt. I am on my hands and knees on the steps of some great pyramid. I am pressing my tongue against the sandy rock.

The part of this dream that really stuck with me was the tactile sensation, which was abnormally prominent. In my experience, dreams are usually situational rather than sensational. Furthermore, the sensation wasn't limited to just my tongue. It covered my whole body. It's an old dream, from the age of four or five. I sometimes think it is a memory of the womb, and what it felt like to be inside.

Cuss Words

One day in the third grade at St. Bede the Venerable Catholic School the teacher was giving an English lesson. She asked the class what your feet would feel like after walking for ten miles with no shoes. I enthusiastically raised my hand and the teacher allowed me to answer.

"Your feet would hurt like hell!"

After class was brought back to order, I was promptly sent to the disciplinarian and given one hour's detention after school. On that day, I learned one of the differences between polite English and cuss-words.

Punk Band

I had a punk band when I was 14. I played guitar and arranged the songs, and provided a bedroom at my mom's house for practicing. The other Matt was in a constant state of irony. He played on a drum set made out of empty canisters of Planters Cheese Balls. Daniel wrote the lyrics and sang. He wrote about hating everybody and about his parents doing coke, and mimicked Darby Crash. Leigh played bass and wore chrome Doc Marten's boots. We all had a crush on her but she was under too many layers of attitude, and we were all too cowardly to attempt any digging.

One day we were practicing. Everybody was making noise and nothing was happening. I lost my senses. I screamed, "SHUT UP!!!" and the I fell on the floor, still wearing my guitar, which crashed along with me providing an appropriate soundtrack to my little breakdown. It felt pretty good. Everybody stopped what they were doing. I stayed on the floor, stared at all the trash on the ground, and ignored everybody in the room. One by one they left, Leigh being the last to go. Once the room was empty I got up and walked outside. It was raining. Leigh was standing in the street and I walked out to where she was. I kind of waved at her or something and she walked off towards her house.

Satan vs. Family

This isn't exactly a memory, but a memory of a dream. It has stuck in my mind through the years as well as many of the waking experiences I've had.

I'm in my father's van and my father is driving. He is being pulled away by Satan. I'm in the desert
and my brother is being pulled into a pit of quicksand and I can't pull him out. Satan is pulling him down.

Those are the residual images of what was once something more detailed and complex. Through the years many details have washed away, but the spirit remains.

Ice Pick vs. Hand

For some reason, I was trying to hollow out a stick using an ice-pick. I was really working at it hard when the thing slipped and sunk right into my palm. I ran inside, carefully holding the ice-pick with my right hand as it protruded from my left.

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!!!!!!"

The Leprechaun Dreams

This isn't exactly a memory, but a recurring dream. I used to have it a lot when I was younger and it has stuck in my mind as well or better than any waking experiences I've had.

I am a little boy. I am in a church. There is panic in the air. I look towards the altar and then I look above it. There is a small ledge above the crucifix. A small laughing man is sitting on the ledge. H0 is a leprechaun. In the back of the church, children are attempting to use the bathrooms, but every time they go in the leprechaun magically locks the door. Only Mrs. Crahan can free them. She is a tall thick woman with hair cut short, and she rips the doors open violently with both hands. To my horror, no one seems to understand what is happening. Child after child walks into the same trap, and Mrs. Crahan is forced to perform her task over and over in order to free them.

After having this dream for about a year, I had another dream featuring the leprechaun.

I am sitting on my front lawn, surrounded by stuffed animals and cartoon characters. We are eating snacks and drinking tea. Everyone is having a nice time. The leprechaun is there, and he is chatting congenially with Tigger (of Winnie the Pooh fame).

I had that dream a couple of times, and then the leprechaun was no more.

Little Matt is Big

There was a loose knit group of kids in my neighborhood growing up. One of them was named "Matt" like I am, but since he was a little bit older and a little bit bigger he was known as "Big Matt" and I was therefore known as "Little Matt".

At my house there was a stretch of land behind the back fence. The fence was big and solid and it granted a certain degree of privacy. I spent a lot of time back there as a kid, and it felt like my territory. One day I took a can of spray paint and tagged that fence. In the biggest letters I could manage I wrote,

"LITTLE MATT IS BIG"

Impressionable

I was playing with some kid in the backyard. He said "Easter sucks."

"Yeah, Easter sucks," I agreed.

For some reason, I then ran inside the house to find my mom. She was in her usual afternoon position: sitting somewhere comfortable, reading, drinking coffee, and eating chocolate chips. Proudly and excitedly I told her what just happened. "He said Easter sucks, and I agreed with him! Isn't that great?"

Lovingly, soberly, she advised me, "No, it's not that great. I know you don't think that 'Easter Sucks'. You should think for yourself, Matthew."

"Hmm, okay."

YMCA

I played sports at the YMCA Winners program when I was a kid. One of the sports was "floor hockey," which is played in a gym with foam sticks and no skates of any kind. You could probably also call it "stick soccer." Anyway, one night I had a game and both my parents were there. They were in the middle of a rather contentious divorce at the time. After the game they had some kind of altercation in the parking lot that ended with my dad being taken away in a police car. I wasn't there for that.

The thing I remember -- the reason I write this -- is hanging out in the lobby, entertaining myself with something or other while my coach sat there trying to keep me distracted from what was going on outside. I remember knowing something was strange, but I don't remember caring. I was willfully ignorant of the drama outside that ended up pitting my family against itself. I remember feeling happy. I remember being unusually focussed on whatever useless thing I was doing, totally ignoring the coach as he awkwardly tried to remind me that everything was fine.