Adrian Mehr
Professor Windy Sumner-Winters
English Composition 1010
06, November 2007



Earliest Memory


By



V. Adrian Mehr







The first thing I remember about my life, is the day my grandfather died. I can still see parts of the day in my mind, without any help from outside sources. He had wanted to start visiting all of the “kids”, almost as if he knew how the day was going to unfold. I have no recollection of how far down the list he got, but I do remember our house, which was next door, was the first stop. Very soon after at one of my aunt’s, he had heart attack, which was not the first one, and fell off the back of a four wheeler that my uncle was driving. The folding chase he sat in, which was the last at our house,. remains in the storage building where my mother placed it to this day, my grandmother did like wise with the clothes he was wearing that day. It was as if both of them were saying “out of sight, out of mind.”, with their actions, but not their words.
I clearly remember making a mud “sculpture” with the sprinkler and my naked three year old body. This meant getting hosed off and showered, which I don’t remember, however, I do remember us being the last to arrive at my aunt’s house, which I do remember. Some things don’t change and neither dose being given hell for it either.
I can remember some of my relatives faces, from around the room, their clothes, their dramatics, some of them seemed to be putting on a show, especially the ones closer to my age, but for who? The dead? I on the other hand, seemed to not understand, that he was “gone” & wondered why my peers were in such a tizzy, they could not have know any more then I, could they? But now being on the other side of life, I think what I was feeling then is what I now call now “clairvoyance” and maybe knew and saw more than even the adults did that day.
Even though I was only almost four when he died, I remember and love my grandfather, as well as being able to see his influence in my life, from the candy I enjoy, “lemon drops” and “red hots”, because he always bought them for me, to the way I carry my self and go about life. In contrast to the stuffing of reality and holding onto the past of my grandmother, as well as being late all the time from my mother and making a big deal about it, like my aunts.
I do miss him, but seem not to be as sad and down cast, like most of the rest of my family, was and seems to be still, but maybe I have more hope or maybe I like him can see what lays ahead.

Adrian Mehr
Professor Windy Sumner-Winters
English Composition 1010
06, November 2007



a Family tradition.
Or
Two pages of bull shit.


Shitted by


V. Adrian Mehr






I have no idea what to write, because in my family, nothing is ever the same, except that nothing is ever the same. We, my brothers and I, really only had my mom’s side of the family. My dad’s parents were divorced when he was a child and then my grandmother illegally moved him across country, where he eventual met my mom. It’s funny how that happens. however my grandmother seemed to care more for “deadbeats” that made her look good over her flesh and blood. My grandfather, his father , who he had regained contact with as an adult, died while I was in the womb
My younger brother and I were the youngest of four boys and our mother the youngest of four girls, putting most of the next generation born before us. Therefore, all the fun together things that bring a family close had been forced like the farce they were, as long as they could be and were over for us.
My family, what the hell, I’ll be honest. ALL My family is “turned funny”! This part of my family never let anyone in, unless you were “with it”, as if they knew what that meant in “Hicksville”. They sure thought they did, but that we didn’t. Ah! The refreshing life as an outcast! Little did I know how much I would pull from that later in life. Looking at it from that angle makes sense now. We are given trials and whatnot and we have the choice to grow and go on with life, or like most of my family, sit and wither away.
I have seen enough rabble rousing, back biting, disregard, disloyalty, disharmony, dishonesty, both know and unknown, all form “good” people that “love” each other, that I hope to be on the road of rooting and eliminating it from my own life.
I have to tell this story. One year, several of the older members of the family conspired to get our branch of the clan to my grandmother’s on “time” for Christmas dinner, so they told my mother a different time than what was told everyone else. My brother, who would later disown most of us, was in town, for what would be his last Christmas at my grandmother’s before she died. This put us with a full house and one bathroom. After, or maybe I should say during the phone call, the rest of us see the receiver fly across the room and hit the floor. “It’s at 5 o’clock and not 6, did I forget to tell you?” my aunt had told my mother. It was around four and the turkey was not quite done and no one was ready. However we had pull, we had to bring the main course. So dinner was at six and it had to be dealt with. My aunt never tried that one again.

an "A-ha"?

As I think and try to come up with an “a-ha”, it’s hard to do, I seem to say “that’s what it was I was trying to remember.” Or to my self “that’s what I have been telling you.”

Here is one that is very painful for to write about, but I fell I should, even if I get written off as a nut case.

Thomas and I had become very close friends rather quickly, which in hind sight, is not the best thing to happen to a chap. Even with “age gaps”, marital status differences, etc. supposedly blocking the way of our friendship, none of which we bought into. We were seen together more often than not.

Then the change began, I will be honest about the fact that I understand a lot of things that are below the surface in life, I just seem to know with out any real reason as to why. So when I began to have interesting dreams this spring I was intrigued, but not taken aback, especially when the things that I was dreaming about were happing at the same time I was dreaming them.

But for the sake of not rambling, back to the abbreviated story. I knew when there was a change, I see these things, I read people & realize when there is a change in body language and or countenance. Thomas began to withdraw and I knew it, but refused to heed it, even after the dream, his and not mine this time, but I knew what it meant. Even after two of my own, I refused to budge, I can be stubborn like that, but “this friendship was a gift & wasn’t going to be taken away or lost. I must save it!”

Then inter neurotic roommate/”friend” Karl. Who is becoming more and more on edge.
As well as the Thomas’s wife, Erika, the worse enemy of a guy’s “best friend”, who I know had some unresolved issues, that she was directing at me.

And now to set the stage.

Karl wanted to throw a pool party, which I knew would be a bit of work for me, but hell, I am game for a good shindig. In all the preparations etc. Karl gets agitated, but I keep trucking, because I am failures with Karl’s quirks by now, having been living with him for 9 months, and the best thing to do is let him deal with it. As the party wound down and few guests were left. Karl, Thomas and Erika, end up out by the pool, I am by this point really tired and began to join them. As I start to place my hand on the door knob, it seems to almost burn me, it wasn’t static, but it seemed like an emotional burn, followed by a ripping sensation in my heart, but I was tired & thought no more of it, till Thomas & I were on the job the next day and then it wouldn’t go away. So I asked him what they talked about out there, he hesitated and then gave this answer about how much potential they saw in me, the direction I was going . . . . . . . it all sounds good, but it was hollow and unbalanced, and I knew it, partly by the look in his eyes.

I was in a state of unrest after that, I couldn’t relax and then my folks asked me the same question I had asked Thomas, in the same wording and my spine bristled. “I don’t really know, what he told me, when I asked, seemed to be all good” I said. They both looked at each other at the same time and I knew I was about to hear what I didn’t want to. They turned back to me and shared more of the story then Thomas had admitted. They had at Thomas and Erika’s on their way out of town to pick up a tool we had barrowed for work., but the conversation was full of Adrian doesn’t do this and that, he needs to do this . . . . . . all things that he had never discussed with me, that if he had , would have look at in an entirely different light. Then that night after not being able to sleep again, I stated to meditate and fell sound asleep till about 3 in the morning when I set bolt upright in bed and had to complete dreams flash through my mind and I accepted the fact that I had been betrayed. Then I wept!

I didn’t say anything to Thomas, like I could have anyway; he disappeared from the picture, just sort of stepped out of my life with out rime or reason, given anyway. Karl whose neurosis began to intensify, even though he was getting paid rent every month, eventually told me to move, just as I was about to start school and had been in a near fatal car wreck, because “I didn’t have a real job.”. But hey, even if for myself, I was working, which is more than can be said for him. . Thomas reappeared and acted as if nothing ever happened. But I on the other had still walk with the limp left from the wounds of loosing two friends as well as family in Thomas’s children.

But I am ALIVE and continuing on with life. All though not an “a-ha” it was a realization, that shed new light on my life, brought me back to school, which showed the path my life was taking, and HELL! It is all going to make a damn good script someday.