My earliest memory.

Ms. Gekko has a post up asking about our very first memory. While I have flashes of images from when I was very young, I think the first complete memory I have is of an event that happened when I was maybe four years old (PJ, I'm sure you can verify or correct this!). Remembering this, er, memory has brought me great joy, so I thought I'd share it with you so that it may bring you great joy as well.

We lived in a small house on a dead-end street in Lansing, Michigan. Because of the cul-de-sac, the cars passing our house were never going very fast. I'm not quite sure how I got out, but I was wandering around in the front yard like a puppy. Every so often a car would pass and I'd stop and watch it go by.

Then I decided it would be a really good idea to throw a rock at a car.

I found a big rock, picked it up with two hands, and stood at the edge of our property, watiting for the next car to come by. After an eternity, a car finally turned onto our street. I waited patiently, right at the side of the road. Seeing me standing there, the driver slowed down as he passed. I lifted the rock up over my head and let it fly with both my hands.

Boom! The rock hit the passenger door, and I started giggling. The car stopped and the driver got out, just as my mom came running out of the house thinking I'd been hit.

"What happened?" she asked.

"He threw a rock at my car!" the guy said.

She asked me if I threw the rock at his door (which dented it, btw). Yes, I said, and giggled some more.

I can't remember anything else that happened during the next two years of my life.

But I'm still giggling about that rock.

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Like Yesterday

My Dad, Robert Kosloski, died four years ago today. October 10, 2002. He died of a rare form of thyroid cancer called Hurthle Cell carcinoma. He was only 51 years old.

I'm one of the lucky few whose two best friends were his parents. I lost one of them that day, and now, four years later, I still reach for the phone to call him all the time.

My Dad was a diehard fan of the Detroit Tigers, so having them three wins away from the World Series right now has a little added significance for me. If you don't have a rooting interest in the A's or the NL teams, maybe you'd consider adopting the Tigers. For Rob.

This is what I said at his funeral:

Heaven got lucky last Thursday. Because on that day, Rob Kosloski showed up. And any place is a better place when my dad’s there. He has a way of brightening up a room the second he walks in. He becomes the center of attention without ever trying to be. That’s because he radiates with love and happiness. Some of you may not have known this, but my dad always wanted to be an architect. He loved the idea of designing and building things. The thing is, he did build things. Relationships. Look around you. Look at all of the people in here. To my father, nothing is more important than family. And if you are a friend, you are family. Everyone loves my dad. And he deserves it. He’s kind. He’s generous. He’s funny. He’s the king of the smart alecks. And he’s always there for you, no matter who you are. And for me, how could I have ever asked for a better father. When I wrote, he read my words. When I acted, he came to see my plays. When I played music, he came to listen. Now I’m 33 years old, and you know what I do for a living? I write. I act. I play music. He encouraged me. He supported me. He’s proud of me, and he let me know it. So today, I mourn the loss of my father. But more importantly, I celebrate his life. The life we were all lucky enough to share with him. Because right now he’s up in heaven with Grandma, Aunt Adeline, Aunt Regina, Uncle Billy, Aunt Elda, Aunt Olga, Bobby Shepke, Gerald Kubbe and every other friend and relative who went before him. He’s up there laughing in that gigantic reunion in the sky. And they’re all thrilled to death to have him because finally, they've got someone to organize the bowling tournament and golf outing. So do this for me … for my dad. Think about what you’re building. The relationships. In the end, that’s all that’ll matter. And that’s what my dad did best. I love you dad. Have fun.

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Scardy cat, scardy cat.

PJ has a post today about irrational fears of little critters. As with all of her posts, it's fun stuff so do go read it. Go ahead, I'll wait...

Welcome back. In the same spirit, I thought I'd talk about the one and only one critter I'm afraid of -- cockroaches -- and also tell a story about another critter -- spiders -- that I'm not afraid of, but had a ghastly experience with once. No, this kind of spider, silly.

First: cockroaches. I've been deathly afraid of cockroaches since the 1982 movie Creepshow. In Creepshow, a guy lives in a germ-free, cleanroom-type environment. Everything is sanitized and antibacterialized. But these damn cockroaches keep sneaking in. He tries to kill them with spray, but as we all know, cockroaches ain't dying by no spray. In the end, they kill him and live in his body. YUCK! So I started having nightmares about cockroachs. I'd dream I was in a big silo-type thing, standing with my arms widespread in the Jesus Christ pose, and the silo was filled with cockroaches. They completely covered me head to toe and kept crawling all over me. There were so many they were too heavy for me to move, so I just had to stand there with the roaches pressing down on me. Yeah, I'm afraid of cockroaches.

Second: the spider story. In eighth grade I went to summer camp with my best buddy of the time, Chuck. One day we went on a day-long canoe trip from our lake, through a winding marsh, to a neighboring lake. It was a splendidly adventurous trip. At one point along the route, however, we arrived at a road that crossed the marsh we were paddling through. We had two options: get out, lift the canoe and carry it across the road, or canoe underneath the road through the culvert that allowed the water to continue flowing. We of course chose the culvert.

In order to get through the culvert, Chuck and I had to get up a head of steam, then duck down into the canoe so our heads weren't decapitated. Once we got into the culvert and looked up, we saw literally thousands and thousands of spiders all along the metal. At first glance, I thought it was pretty cool. Chuck, however, did not. He freaked out and started yelling and kicking -- yes, kicking -- the spiders. This generated two results, neither of which were positive. One, it slowed down our momentum, which, had he left well enough alone, would have carried us all the way to the end of the culvert. Two, it caused many of those thousands and thousands of spiders TO FALL RIGHT THE FUCK ON TOP OF ME. I was screaming at Chuck to stop kicking, he was screaming at the spiders, and the spiders were scurrying about on top of me.

Then, when we were maybe half the way through, the canoe bumped into the side of the culvert and stopped moving forward. Chuck stopped kicking, thank God, and I managed to swipe most of the spiders off of me, but we were stuck there. "Dude, what do we do?" he asked me. I suggested we use our paddles to push against the side of the culvert, propelling us to the end. It worked quite nicely. Until we got to the very end, that is.

With daylight taunting us, we stopped once again right at the mouth of the culvert. The top edge of the culvert was bent down toward the water, causing the front top of the canoe to catch and halt our movement. We tried pushing as hard as we could with our paddles, but to no avail. The only option was to push the canoe further down into the water, lowering the top below the bent culvert end and allowing us to exit. Keep in mind, there are still thousands and thousands of spiders on the inside of said culvert.

Chuck and I wiped at the spiders directly above us, causing them to fall into our boat and on top of us, then pushed hard against the top. As we did so, spiders immediately crawled along our hands and down our arms, but we pushed until the tip was low enough, then shove the canoe out of the culvert and into the lake on the other side. We both jumped out of the canoe without a word and frantically brushed at our bodies to get the spiders off. After visualizing the spiders getting into our clothes, we stripped down to our bare-assed nothingness, through our clothes into the canoe, and swam along side it the rest of the way to the beach.

I'm still not afraid of spiders, really, but I sure as shit don't like them getting on me. And if I see a cockroach, I'll run away screaming like a baby.

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College enlightenment.

Not sure why, but I got to thinking today about an elective I took in college called Literary Interpretation of the Bible. We read select parts of both testaments for their literary merit vs. as the word of God. It was by far the most fascinating class I ever took. As I'm sure you can imagine, a great number of people simply could not achieve that sort of objectivity -- they were so tied to their faith that they couldn't let go of the concept of the Bible being the word of God. The professor was so damn good at steering conversations into discussing the book as literature that he would befuddle (yes, you're goddamn right I said befuddle) those who tried to talk about it on word of God terms. I had no problem with the concept, and was completely and utterly mesmerized by what I read. Without the weight of having to apply it to me and my life and whether or not I would go to heaven or hell, I opened myself up to the writing in a completely different way.

What unexpectedly enjoyable class(es) did you have in your school days, be they college or high school? Have they stuck with you in any way, or perhaps even change your views or direction back then?

Do tell!

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Kicking Maynard

Fifth grade was a monumental transition for me. After four years of attending a private Lutheran school with only five other kids in my class, I moved to Riley Elementary, our neighborhood public school. I suppose calling it a neighborhood school is pretty deceiving, given that there was no neighborhood. We lived in the middle of the country in rural Michigan, and Riley Elementary was a few miles away in a different middle of the same country. Our neighbors were soy beans and corn fields, not much else.

Luckily I'd gone to public school kindergarten, so I knew some of the kids in my new school. Chris Ingle, Randall Schmidt, Cory Henningson, Tim Boak... they welcomed me back into the fold pretty quickly. In this tribe of Riley renegades I became Kosmo the Funny, never backing down from a challenge to make someone laugh. Typically my humor was sophomoric and harmless, consisting of a repertoire of characters each with their own distinctive contortion of voice and face. Sometimes, however, when one of my characters seemed to be letting me down, I'd shift to a crueler brand of humor at the expense of certain classmates. It's not something I'm proud of, and those memories have certainly molded me into an adult who shies away from insult comedy, believing it not only to be cruel, but to be a complete cop-out; it's an escape hatch from a lack of good ideas. Don't get me wrong; some people are just plain douche bags and they get what they deserve. But the rest of you are relatively safe from me.

When you're 11 years old, however, you're far from enlightened. So The Boy With Lice and The Girl Who Smelled Like Pee were easy targets. Especially The Girl Who Smelled Like Pee, because she smelled like pee. All the time, she smelled like pee. Contrary to what you might be thinking, this wasn't an "I just peed in my pants" pee smell. This was a "someone just peed on me" smell. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about; every school had one. I'd say things like, "I'm hungry for a snack. Who wants some peeeeeee-nuts?" The gang would laugh. "What's your favorite bird? A peeeeeee-cock?" That got a huge laugh, and it was worth double points because I said "cock" as well.

Like I said, I'm not proud of it.

There was another kid in our class by the name of Earl Maynard. Earl was the quintessential farm boy. When he got to school he'd already been up for a good four hours milking cows or feeding pigs or slaughtering chickens. We knew this because he didn't bother to really clean up afterward; he just came to school in his bib overalls and torn flannel shirt.

One quick side point: It's not like the rest of us were high-class richies. We were all country kids well below the middle-class line. Which goes to show that any society will develop a class system, regardless of how close those within it really are to each other.

Back to Earl. He was a pretty big kid. Not big as in fat, but tall and solid. Like I said, he was a farm boy. His most distinctive feature by far, however, was his feet. They were enormous. At 11 years old Earl Maynard's feet were probably a size 13, all the more accentuated by the fact that he wore big steel-toed shit-kickin' boots every day. He had a slow, lumbering walk, and his movements resembled what I imagine a dump truck would look like if it drove with triangular wheels.

Thus the game Kicking Maynard was born. The object was to sneak up behind Earl during recess and kick him in the ass with the side of your shoe (using the point of your shoe was forbidden, as that would have been cruel). The kicking itself wasn't really the fun part; no, it was the ensuing chase. Earl would turn around and take off after whoever kicked him, stringing together curse words only a true farm boy would know how to combine properly. The combination of huge feet and huger boots made for a ridiculous sight, a dump truck with triangular wheels trying to chase a Firebird with positraction. When Earl got tired and gave up, someone else would sneak up and kick him, starting the farce all over again.

It was glorious fun.

One particularly balmy spring day we'd been playing Kicking Maynard for a good 15 minutes. Our stomachs were hurting from the spectacle, he was to the point of repeating curse words he'd used earlier, and the bell signifying the end of recess was just about to ring. Always needing to get the last laugh, I decided that one more kick was needed to cap off the game. I crept up behind him and WHAM! I got him good. Now one thing about Kicking Maynard is that when you're the kicker, you don't get to see his initial reaction because you're turning on a dime and hightailing it out of there. On this occasion, I wanted to see his reaction up close. So I stood there a fraction of a second longer, watching. He was exhausted, so his turn was slow. "Fuck you, fucker dick!" he yelled as he turned. His face was red, his eyes were open wide, and his bottom jaw jutted out so that his lower teeth practically covered his upper lip. That was my cue, so I turned and took off. Being one of the fastest boys in school, I knew I could afford that extra moment. Laughing hysterically, I began my sprint. Catching me was out of the question.

Unless I tripped.

I tried my hardest to pull out of the tailspin. I didn't go down right away, stumbling along, my legs trying to catch up with my tumbling upper body. But my feet crashed into each other and onto my knees I went.

Pain. The sharpest pain I could imagine exploded directly on my tail bone. I screamed and fell on my side. Again, the pain, this time in my ass crack. Tears poured from my eyes. I could see my friends staring in horror. There was nothing they could do. Earl had pounced on me like a wolf on a rabbit, bringing his leg as far back as his quad muscles would allow and driving the tip of his steel-toed boot into my rear end like a psychotic construction worker behind the controls of a wrecking ball.

I'm not sure how many times Earl's boot connected with my ass before the playground attendants pulled him off me. I do know, however, that it was more than a week before I could sit without feeling like my seat was a large hot coal.

That was the last time Kicking Maynard was ever played at Riley Elementary School. I didn't even pick on The Boy With Lice anymore. It was a life-changing experience, I guess.

But The Girl Who Smelled Like Pee? Come on; she did smell like pee.

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