The Last day

I remember my family always saying, " James, we could lock you in a closet for hours and you could entertain yourself couldnt you?"  I took this as a complete compliment as im sure it was intended.  I wielded my imagination with a knowing smirk, that at any moment i could simply disappear into some other dimension where  power rangers were close allies and where i was some combination of captain america with a pan lid, robin hood with a wire clothes hanger, or a ninja turtle using one of moms seemingly endless supply of colored bandanas.  i played with action figures and legoes and play mobiles building giant communities out of all of the pieces i had.  The most important game i played though was what friends and I came to call "Man".  Playing Man simply meant that you became some sort of hero, some loose cannon cop witha propensity for mischeif or an impossibly brave superhero with a sixth sense for injustice.  We would play for hours and hours, sometimes our charachters would morph, we would take turns being stronger than eachother, some times we would even team up against the invisible enemy, in fact most of the time we did that, that way we could both be heroes at the same time.  You had to do a lot less compromising with your buddy when you were on the same team ( no no no i hit you with my fist and its made of metal so you have to be hurt).  I played with action figures and the like and i played Man for longer than most, into 7th and 8th grade.  I didnt tell anyone, for obvious reasons, and so was forced underground.  At the age of 12 or 13 most boys have moved out of that stage and into another one and so i was left to play man on my own accord.  Playing on my own offered unique advantages, i could do anything and did not have to consult a soul, nobody could say my charachter was too powerfull and most importantly the dialogue could go on in my head, this is important for playing man while "underground" if anyone were to ask why im swinging a stick around i could just say i stepped in a bees nest or something and then run away, which would be an acceptable response to a bee attack and coincidentally exactly what i would want to do if cought playing Man.  It was early on in 8th grade when i walked out into my back yard, i had not played Man in some time because i had been hanging out with real people more.  I stumbled upon a stick that was one of a kind it looked like some sort of awesome.  I made a decision in my mind that day, that moment, that this would be the last time, this would be the last day that i would allow myself to play man.  Just then a flleet of zepplins came accross the sky while grappling hooks simultaneously were hurled over the roof of my house.  the trees were shaking with movement and i was surrounded.....by ninjas.  All i had to protect myself was this awesome stick, i gripped my weapon and made this smirk, that smirk i talked about but very quickly that smirk turned into the kind of smirk you see in cheesy action movies, that kind of smirk thats like, "oh you ninjas are in deep shit, you dont even know".  They came at me from every angle and i layed them all out. at one point i through my awesome stick at a ninja,after a particularly impressive combo move, so as to incapacitate him but was then quickly surrounded by the remaing ninjas. They could sense my weekness without the awesome stick and pounced.  i looked like a dried up worm covered by fire ants, and then all of a suddent i realized a power of mine i hadnt been using, you guessed it, super strength!  I burst into the air and so did the ninjas flying off of me like water droplets off a dog shaking.  The last 30 seconds of the battle happened in slow motion as the ninjas perrished blow by devestating blow.  I broke one ninja over my knee so that there was only one remaining.  I looked him in the eye and said, "im gonna let you live, go tell your cronies im done"  that ninjas scampered away soiled but greatful.  i looked around the yard at the fallen army and slowly walked back into the house being careful not to step on a ninja star (thats the worst!) walked the stairs into a new chapter of my life. I walked into accompsha.

the plane to boston

I was on a plane ride to Boston two years ago when I stumbled upon just a really fun but sad string of thoughts.  When i sat down in my designated seat I was pleasently suprised to see that a one year old was sitting in front of me in his own seat no less.  I dont travel on planes near enough to be pissed off about a baby in close proximity, most especially sense, more than likely, me and my brother would irratate scores more people than a crying baby with a poopy diaper could ever dream of.  So i am sitting down, i put my ipod in and no sooner do i start listening to sigur ros does a small blonde head begin to creep ever so slowley over the head of the chair in front of me.  I only saw a flash of his eyes, blue like mine, before he shot back into his seat.  I smiled to myself knowing that i was in for a stirring game of peekaboo.  Moments later, i was looking out the window at the tar-mac waiting for take off, and a blurry blonde object snuck into my peripheral vision, my periph, only this time he peered around the side of his chair, almost falling out of his seat.  I tried to slowly sit back so as not to startle him and maybe shoot him a funny face but as soon as a moved he shot back into his seat again like a tube worm.  This game went on for some time, like 30 minutes, before he was comfortable enough to just stare at me.  I sat in my chair not sure what to do or how to react but this little blonde hair blue eyed one year old child stared me down, his chest proped on his arm rest and his head sideways from around his seat he stared at me smiling with his mouth and his eyes, literally a string of drool connected his face to the floor and he stared at me, sometimes laughing in short bursts but just stared at me.  all i could think of was why cant i do this to other people.  this kids mom was asleep with her ipod in, which is what you are supposed to do on a plane instead of interact with those around you while you soar impposibly through the sky traveling at over 300 miles per hour at thousands of feet elevation!  so me and this kid are in a dead locked gaze and i am wondering what would happen if we allowed eachother, as adults, to just give in to those very innocent urges to just stare at someone because they are interesting to you or just smile stupidly at someone.  I mean what if i turned around and did that to the people behind me what would they do, or worse what if i propped my head on that kids armrest in front of me and just smiled at him, imagine his mothers horror when she woke to see my face just inches from her child and me smiling and drooling like an idiot.  i realize we dont live in a perfect world and i understand to some extent why i cant interact with people the way this kid did and will do until he becomes self conscious and begins to worry about how people view him, but i wish we did live in that world.

accompsha to you all

That Damn Chicken

It was about two years ago when i got my first chicken.  She came to me through a game of bigger, better, best, which is a game we play in young life where kids will go around to people they know in the area and starting from a penny or paperclip will trade and see who can get the coolest thing by the end of the night.  Well one group of good ol' boys traded their way to a chicken and when all was said and done they didnt want her anymore.  knowing that i was an animal lover she was brought to me, but i had little experience in raising a chicken after all i was just a twenty something with the wind at my back, i couldnt let some chick teather me down.  My heart went out to the terrified fowl as she made this elongated squacky type of growl that i had no idea chickens made.  after looking at her for a minute i said, "guys there is no way we can keep her, what woud we do with her just stick her in a cage or something, that would suck".  One of my 7 roomates piped up, "we could eat her." it was a morbid suggestion but seeing as how i had no idea what else to do with her i thought that eating her would be the best and honestly most humane option.  I ofcourse could not be there for the murder as i had already grown very attatched to the chicken and so i went on a with my other roomate Ed. As i walked away from that doomed chiken her eyes locked on to mine as they stretched her neck across some stray piece of wood that would soon catch my hatchet, saving the blade from dings and dents.  I came home like a man tresspassing, peering around looking for any signs of life, or death rather. As i stepped on to our front porch i saw the chicken perched on the corner of the diapitated couch we couldnt seem to part with, as if she had lived here all along and that was just where she sat.  Toomey looked at me and said, "I couldnt do it dude, she just started going wrrrraaaaaaa ( best i can type the squaky growl) and looking at me."  Suddenly it didnt matter that we didnt know what to do with her, we were keeping her, it was unanimous, and so we called her Cluckers.  Everyone loved cluckers, we made a home for her under our back porch, a beautiful little chicken coup.  Cluckers laid us one egg in her life and it was on Tylers lap, what can i say he has a way with women.  We bought more chickens and even a duck and raised them from babies, we originally got them for cluckers to have friends but she didnt much care for them and spent most of her time outside of the coup and on the corner of the couch on the porch, shitting behind the cushions.  Everything was great  we had the coolest pets, everyone was happy to see Cluckers wandering around the one way (thats what everyone calls the street we live on)  except one person.  Merl is a sad old lady who i truly do feel sorry for.  She spends most of her time going the peoples garbage, snooping around their homes trying to find reasons to complain to the city about college students.  One fatefull day Merl snooped her way behind our house and saw our chicken coup and called animal control on us.  They came and told us that we had to have the gone in two days.  We had no idea what to do with ourselves, Cluckers was a pet, we held her all the time, everyone loved her, she was a nice lady.  We of the brown house came to the consensus that we woud slaughter our animals and eat them.  While i was away, i cant quite remember where, the deed was done and all that was left of them when i came home was plastic bags full of meet in the freezer, each with the name of the occupant written boldly across the bag in sharpy.  I dont remember eating them although i know we did, the meal didnt satisfy near as much as the memories did and still do til this day.

accompsha

Well i have never thought about having a blog but my buddy ben has one and i didnt take him as the blogging type so i said to myself, hey i could have one too.  Why did i call it accompsha though?  well it was the first thing that popped into my head that sounded bloggy or bloggish.  You see when  i was a younger person i went to St. michaels Catholic church im not sure what city it was in because i was too young to care about learning how to get from place to place because thats what moms do.  There is a time in the Catholic Mass that the priest will say something like, " God bless this and that and also for all the prayers in your heart" and then he would pause for like 2 seconds to let you think.  As a ten year old boy i remember being so pissed every sunday because i never had time to gather my thoughts or really actually think about what prayers might be in my heart.  Every week the same thing, until one sunday i decided that i was gonna spend all of mass up until that point praying, thinking about what and who i wanted to pray for and about and after i had prayed all i could i just called the prayer "accompsha" so that when the priest gave us two seconds to think about what we wanted to pray for, i simply said to God, "accompsha" and he knew exactly what it meant.