The Road From Here

This chapter was written on Sunday, May 7, 2006.

Chapter Seven: Back In Black

What I am about to tell you is so hard to believe, you will never believe me when I tell you. Okay, here goes nothing: I was late for the first day of school. Yeah, I said it.

I woke up about five minutes before the bus left. To tell you the truth, I forgot that I had school that morning. I got dressed and walked to school.

When I got there, I discovered that my homeroom had been move, although it had the same people in it. We went from Mr. Seiler's in the Home Economics room to Mrs. Jackins room. When I got there, Cactus was already at school. I walked in and sat down at the desk in the corner. Jacob Spittle was there, too.

"What's up, man?" I said to Cactus. "Not much. I figured you'd be late. You're always late!" Cactus replied, grinning. "Shut the hell up man. Just because I can't wake up in the morning doesn't mean you can start bitching. At least I get here, that's all that matters." I said, handing my late slip to Mrs. Jackins. We started joking around. I didn't have a pen with me that day, so Cactus gave me a black one.

After the bell rang, I went to my first period class. I had sophomore biology with my older brother Mark. He failed it his sophomore year, I guess, since he was the only junior in there. Mark and I were also two of the only four guys in that whole class.

Mr. Lowell taught that class. I always thought that he was a little odd in the fact that he always called on the girls in the class, rather than us guys. Even with us being outnumbered, we were rarely called on to answer any questions about the topic.

"Amber, how many cells are in this slide? Kara, How many cells are in this slide? Lisa, how can you find the number of electrons in this cell? Megan, what comes after Genus? Rob, what is the shape of DNA called? Lauren, what is an Okazaki fragment? Kayla, how many chromosomes are in the female body? Amanda, what were the names of the men who discovered DNA? Cassie, how do you set up this problem?" That's Mr. Lowell for you.

Period two I had English 10. At the beginning of the year, I sat at the front of the second row. I hate sitting in the front of any class, so I moved to the back. I used to sit in the back and talk to my cousin Tony Dow.

Third period I had Algebra I with Mrs. Miles. I failed it in the ninth grade, so I ended up taking it with my freshman brother Joe. How embarrasing. At least I wasn't the only sophomore in there, because evidently Shannon Michaud had failed it also. She used to sit near me, and I would talk to her in class. Everybody else in there was a freshman.

Fourth period I had health with J. He's a good teacher, but he doesn't let anybody talk without raising your hand. We let that rule slide all the time, though, and J didn't do much to stop it.

Jennifer Holcombe was in that class too. I didn't really know her very well at the time, but she was Morgan Svitila's best friend in ninth grade, so I had met her before. I didn't talk to her at all in that class, nor did I talk to anybody else. I sat in the first row in the corner and didn't talk to anybody. I had made small talk with Shannon Michaud, but not very much.

Period five I had World History. I sat in the same seat that I had for Geography in the ninth grade, except this year, I was the only person sitting in that entire 1/3 of the room. Tony Dow was in that class, but he sat on the other side of the room with his off-and-on girlfriend Laurie Levesque.

Period six I had a class called Utopian Societies. There were only six of us in that class. My brother Mark, Jodie London, Whitney Grass, David Hartford, Evan Lento, and I. It was with Mrs. Brewer, and we spent almost half the school year studying utopia. It was so boring that I dropped out in December.

Period seven I had a study hall in the cafeteria, which was shared by Mr. Nordin and Mr. Cottle. There was three empty rows of seats between me and the rest of the study hall.

Within the first week that school went back in, I checked myself into The Aroostook Medical Center. I physically felt like I was going to die. My heart was racing, my chest felt like the Denta-Door was parked on top of it, I was sweating profusely, and I could barely walk. They did bloodwork with a sample of blood from my left forearm, gave me an IV in my right arm, and hooked me up to the EKG machine to moniter my heart rate in case I went into cardiac arrest. They also did a chest x-ray to see if anything was physically wrong with me. Three hours after I checked in, I walked out, got into a waiting car, and drove home.

I was diagnosed with chronic panic attacks, something that I had inherited from my father. The feeling usually lasts for about a half an hour, and during that time, you can't sit still, you can't think straight, and your almost waiting for a heart attack to kill you, due to the pressure in your upper chest. I have to say, based on experience, that a panic attack is one of the scariest f***ing things I've ever endured.

I usually only have one or two panic attacks a month, sometimes less, but it's like looking death in the face and provoking him to kill you. God bless you, and I hope you never suffer from severe panic attacks like I have, and still do.

Study hall in the cafeteria was strange for a couple of weeks. I sat in back of the room by the windows, and everybody else sat in front near the vending machines. I used to sit by myself and work on my music all period. I sat facing the study hall, but they all had their backs to me, so the only way the rest of the people in my study hall could see me would be if they turned around. Well, that's what started happening.

Remember Megan DeLong from the summer of 2005? Well, she used to sit next to her friend Amber Bradley. They would talk and giggle all period, talking about girly stuff, hot guys, Laguna Beach and stuff like that. All this time, I would be in back, immersed into my musical world. I had my headphones on, and I was writing song after song by myself. But every single time I looked up, Amber and Megan would be looking back at me. As soon as they saw me looking back at them, they would turn around. It was happening again and again, everyday, for weeks. I never understood why they were looking at me, but doesn't really matter I guess. It's just something strange that happened.

I had algebra with all the freshman except Shannon Michaud, like I said before. I sat at a back table in the corner by myself. Everybody else in the room was sitting next to somebody except me. Shannon sat right in front of me, and every once in a while, whe would turn around and talk to me. It was nice to finally have somebody to talk to in that class.

The weeks before the Potato Harvest went by slow. It felt like half the year was already over when we got out for harvest. I remember walking home the first day of vacation, thinking about what I was going to do over break. I hadn't gone to Lewiston in about a year at that time, but I knew that my grandparents didn't want to go down there.

I spent all of the Potato Harvest sitting at home working on my music. I didn't have anything else to do. I didn't have a job at the time, so I just played video games in my spare time. Picture me playing video games and writing songs for three weeks. I can picture it. I almost wanted to go back to school.

When I got back to school, I almost wanted to go back on vacation and sit at home for 22 hours a day staring at the ceiling. I knew it in my heart, and I felt it around me. I was a social outcast, a reject. People stared at me like I had three ears or something. I felt like I was sitting on a stage in front of everybody in the school, bare ass naked, trying to play Yanni on a violin. That's how stupid and out of place I felt.

September went by fast considering the pain of having to go to school, only to be put on display. I lit a candle and the raised flag on our flagpole on September 11, 2005, in honor of the victims from that day four years ago. I also lit a candle on September 13, 2005, the nine year anniversary of the death of rap superstar Tupac Shakur. He has been my idol, and personal role model since 2003.

Mark bought the Tupac: Resurrection soundtrack in July of 2004, and that's when I first started listening to Pac. Before that, I listened to mostly Shady/Aftermath rappers like Eminem and Dr. Dre. In September of 2004, however, Mark let Latisha Neece borrow the CD, because she asked him if she could burn it. He let her borrow it, and told her to bring it back the following Friday. To this day, she has never returned the CD, and I personally think she either lost it, kept it, ruined it somehow, or gave it to somebody. Either way, that's one less CD I don't have to listen to. Damn.

My grandfather turned 75 on September 30, 2005. We had a birthday party for him, and celebrated the rest of the day. That was the end of September.

October went by a little faster than September had. Cactus had his birthday on October 13, 2005. He turned 16 that day, and I never got him anything, but all hell, I'm a guy. Broke guys like us at the time don't do that kind of thing unless they're gay. I'm not gay and he's not gay, just to clear things up. We both like girls.

My birthday was on Saturday, October 30, 2005. I went to school the day before that, and my name was on the scrolling birthday marquee in the main lobby. Plenty of people saw it clearly scrolling Happy Birthday Rob B. There's only one other Rob B. in the school, and it obviously wasn't his birthday. Unsuprisingly, the only people to wish me happy birthday were Cactus, Tony Dow, and my homeroom teacher Mrs. Jackins. Nobody else besides my family even seemed to notice, although I was getting used to this kind of scheme already. People seem to act like I'm not even in a room, when I'm clearly sitting there.

One day in health a week after my birthday, I was sitting in my usual seat. Shannon had moved to sit next to Lauren Faulkner in the back row, so I was all by myself. J decided to let us have a free day to watch the TV in the upper corner of the room. There were only two of us guys in the room that day. Lee Gagnon was the other guy. He wanted to watch some kind of sports synopsis show on NESN, and he was fighting with Sarah Long over what to watch. She wanted to watch Will and Grace. They argued for a few minutes, and finally, Sarah said "Lee we're not watching sports, you're the only guy in the room!" I, on the other hand, sat right across from her in the next row over. I felt like a complete douchebag because everybody looked over at me, but nobody said anything. I got up and left the room.

Over the next few weeks of November, I started to get to know this guy in my seventh period study hall named Jared Tardy. He was one of Joe's friends from junior high the year before, but they didn't hang out much anymore. One day, I was out back working on my songs, when he came back to see what I was doing. We started talking that day, and pretty soon we were friends. Everyday, we would sit in the back of the room and talk about random stuff.

Mr. Cottle, the chorus director and notable pianist, had been unaware that I played the piano. One day after school, I was in the music room playing the school's piano when he came in. He listened to me play for a minute, and sat down. When I took a break, he offered me a deal.

"Rob, I didn't know you could play the piano." he said, stunned. "Really? Almost the whole town knows by now, after I played for the Veteran's Day Assembly last year." I replied, massaging the white ivory keys under my fingertips. "How long have you been playing?" He asked. "Seven years." I told him. He thought to himself for a minute. "How about this. As long as you check in with me first, I'll let you and Jared come in the music room during study hall, so you guys can practice?" I was suprised that he was willing to let us two goofballs come in here unsupervised every day of the week.

I agreed to his deal, and everyday after that, Tardy and I would check in with Cottle, and then go in the music room and play the piano for everybody else in the study hall. They couldn't see us, but there was no doubt they could hear us.

In late November, I was talking to Joe at home. He was saying something about an opening for a job up at the nursing home that he wanted to apply for, but he had to be 15. He was only 14 at the time, so he couldn't do it. The position he was talkin about was called a feeding assistant.

Over the next few days, Tardy had heard something about the job also, and had mentioned it to me in study hall.

"Did you hear about that feeding assistant's course they're offering up at the nursing home?" he asked me one day, chewing on a roast beef sandwich.

"Yeah, Joe said something about it, why?" I said, not seeing his point at first. "We're both 15," Tardy said, almost choking. "We should go up there and apply." I thought about it at first. It seemed rediculous to me. I couldn't picture myself working in a nursing home, chiseling dried sh** out of an old lady's ass crack. But something made me want to do it.

You have been looking for a job, Rob. This could be your only shot to get one, especially in a small town like this. Go for it, dogg.

"Sure, what the hell." I told him. "Why not." That was that. I was going to apply for a job at a nursing home.

The next day, I went up to the nursing home. I went inside for the first time that day, and went up to the counter. A nurse was sitting at the desk.

"Hi, my name is Rob," I told her. "Who do I see about the feeding assistant's course?" I looked around. It didn't smell like ass in the building, and I thought at first that maybe this wasn't a real nursing home.

"Just a minute dear," Vanda said. Her name tag read Vanda Cousins. "Let me page Kelly down here." She got on the phone and asked for Kelly Lundeen. A minute later, she appeared, coming down the hall, a hand extended to shake mine.

"Hi, Rob! I'm Kelly. You're interested in the feeding assistant's course?" She was beaming ear to ear. I guess she really likes her job, I thought. On second thought, she must be Courtney Lundeen's momma. They look just alike. Kelly led me into a room with a computer. She wrote down the TAMC website for me and told me how to register and get to the Feeding Assistant's Course homepage. I stuffed the yellow Post-It® in my pocket.

"Okay, we'll hopefully see you again!" she said, beaming. I liked her from the second I first saw her. If I do work here, I hope she's my boss. She's cool. I went home and registered for TAMC.org. I filled out the online application for a Feeding Assistant and hit "Send". I got an email a few minutes later that said I would be sheduled for an interview. I couldn't believe it. All this on a whim! No, all this on Tardy's whim!
I had an interview on Friday, November 18, 2005 at 3:00 PM. I had one of Mark's polo shirts with the collars with me that I had borrowed. On the way up to the nursing home, I tucked in my 2XL sized SouthPole shirt in as much as I could and pulled the polo shirt over it.

I walked in to the nursing home and one of the nurses told me where Kelly Lundeen's office was. I went down the hall and around the corner, and when I did, Michelle Tweedie was coming out of Kelly's office.

"Okay, thank you." Michelle said, a packet of papers in her hand. She looked at me, but didn't seem to notice I was there. I sat down in an overstuffed chair to wait. Walker, Texas Ranger was on TV. Finally, Michelle left. She didn't even say hi to me, she just walked out the door. I went in and sat down in the chair in Kelly's office.

"Hi, Rob! So nice to see you came back!" she began, shuffling some papers on her desk. Over the next twenty minutes, she explained to me what the feeding assistant's program was all about, and she gave me the schedule to the training classes. I had to be trained first before I could work "on the floor", meaning out in the dining room or in resident's rooms.

That night, I went home kind of excited, but in a way a little whacked out. Dude, you just landed a job working with a bunch of oldies that won't remember you when come in to work every other day. I brushed off the thoughts and thought about the fact that after a year and a half living in this dinky town, I finally found some work to make me feel useful. It wasn't manly work like I had hoped I would find, like working on cars, but hell, a job is a job, right? That night I went to sleep patiently awaiting my first class, on December 13, 2005.