Knowledge on My Terms and Other Tales from Growing Up

I promised last time that I would continue by talking about how my natural intelligence carried me through grade school. Basically, I was that kid. You know who I'm talking about. The one that raises his hand for every answer. The one that wins the spelling bees. The one that turns in his test first, and everyone looks up and thinks, "how in the world is he done already." Now I know that might come off as a little conceited, but we're talking about events of 10+ years ago here, and I'm trying to paint you a picture of just how I rolled back in those days. I hated homework because I found it incredibly mundane to continuously practice something that I had already mastered during class. I never really studied, instead relying on my patented "Gagliardi Method" of learning.

The premise is simple. You pay very close attention in class, relying on the teacher's emphasis to show you what you really need to learn, while at the same time utilizing any processes that they provide immediately (this part is mostly true for math or science). Most kids spend way too much time taking menial notes rather than actually listening to what a teacher has to say. There are so many subtle verbal clues if you bother to look for them that can help you to a better grade and greater understanding of the subject matter. This works all the way up through the college level, and I recommend trying it for all of you students out there. That is not to say that you don't take notes, but only write down key points and then return to paying attention to the professor.

It may seem totally logical what I'm saying, almost to the point where it doesn't need to be said, but you'd be surprised at how many college students (and to a lesser extent, high schoolers) simply write down everything and when they go back to look at their notes realize that they know nothing. I made it through many of my classes with high marks, often without even buying the book for the class just by doing this (and attending class regularly - obviously a huge key) before my nervous breakdown. Oooooh - Foreshadowing!

I have to interrupt here and just say how simply awful my little mini-vacation was...basically I would have much rather spent all the time at work rather than have had the time off with the way things went. I hope I can get through this time. I will say that last night was the first time that I would have been ok with not waking up...and that scared me. I'll be back to finish this post at some point, but I wanted to get posted what I already have done.

Expectations and Chapter 1: The Story So Far

One of the most difficult things I've dealt with throughout my life is expectations. With my 10 year high school reunion on the horizon, and randomly reconnecting with people from my childhood on Facebook, I've been thinking a lot about where I am and where I've been. I've decided to actually put this to paper, with the hope that maybe I can lay to rest some of the demons that have plagued me for so long. This will probably be a multiple post endeavor, but I want to start going through my life so that I can move forward and feel good about myself and where I am headed. In order to do that I have to figure out what I want and be able to make a path to that point. My first step on that path is to acknowledge the past but loosen its grip on my life. Major topics that I want to cover are intellectual success, social growth, and epic failure with women. No better place to start than from the actual beginning.

I was born on June 23rd, 1981. My first memories come at about age two, but they are spotty at best. I learned to read very early, sometime during my age 3 year. At age 3, I was also able to name most of the game show hosts on television, from the very easy Price is Right (Barker obv) and Classic Concentration (Trebek actually), to the more difficult Password (Bert Convy) and Joker's Wild (Jack Berry). I was incredibly voracious in my search for knowledge. I wanted to take in every possible fact and figure that I could. It was during these early years (3-6 or so) that I developed my keen interest in sports. I read the sports page every morning and devoured the statistics with true vigor. At the same time, I spent my early years making friends at Preschool and Kindergarten, culminating with my first three actual friends: Dave Epifano (my lifelong best friend, and still a friend to this day), Darren Hastings, and Brendan Kelly (not as much for these guys).

I was very nerdy and had glasses at age 5, and not the kind of glasses kids have now, but giant thick glasses that didn't help my image. I was (and still am to a large extent) a know-it-all, which annoyed many of my peers from the get go, but I was never afraid of being intelligent. I knew that I was sort of dorky but I didn't care because my love of intelligence and the attention that it brought me from my family and teachers was more than enough to ignore childish insults. Despite all this, my love of sports led me to play sports every summer for the city of Parma Heights and I loved it.

I attended St. John Bosco school from age 5 until age 13. It was my life to go there every day and I still have many memories from those days. While my brain was developing at a ridiculous rate, my social skills had not nearly blossomed to that level yet. I was a crybaby and a poor sport and combining that with being a nerd and "knowing it all," along with a sudden weight gain in third grade made me relatively unpopular, especially with girls. The guys, on the other hand, mostly liked me because I had no problem sharing my intelligence, letting people copy off of me, and I loved sports and was a solid athlete despite my overweight frame.

Random memory insertion here: I hated changing clothes after gym. I always rushed through it as fast as I possibly could as we were all crammed into a very small bathroom that was near the gym. I remember in 8th grade being in there while one of my classmates (sorry Matt Foraker, but I think the statute of limitations has expired on keeping guy talk between the guys) who was very popular recounted his sexual experience with a girl who was one of the "slutty" girls in our class (there were a total of 55ish kids in our grade). I had never heard of such talk before...I mean, I knew the health class idea of what sex was but never had actually heard one of my friends/classmates talk about sex. The idea of it sort of scared me. I was a sweet boy who had nothing more than crushed on a couple of girls for the entirety of my grade school career (hi there Jessica Levi and Tiffany Karpac!) and had no idea that this sort of thing was actually going on already. I had no idea at the time, but the game had changed.

I was a very sensitive boy. I didn't like being made fun of, not for any reason. Because of this, I wanted everything to be perfect. I wanted to be included in everything. I remember crying a lot growing up because people made fun of me and I didn't know how to just laugh at myself and get over it yet. I don't think of my childhood as a childhood because I was so sensitive and pensive most of the time that I didn't do wild and crazy things that kids do, but at least I had my friends.

I had an amazing group of close friends that I spent my summers with: Dave, Erich Krems, his sister Kerry, my next door neighbor Meredith, and the periphery was filled with even more friends like Jason Radzyminski, Joe Selesky, and others that we played ball with, started clubs with, swam, and battled in board games (Hotels FTW). We were amazingly tight from the time I started school until I moved a few miles away and between that and the start of high school it was no longer a daily thing that we could see each other at age 14. I will always hold the Drug Mart and 76 runs to get candy and soda in high regard in my memories. I also remember the first vestiges of list-making (something I still love to this day) when Dave and I helped Erich with his paper route and we talked about the various girls we wanted to date and ranked them.

I had an enemy in our group of friends, Mike Yakubics, who hated me when other people were around but actually was pretty cool when it was just me and him. We played Tecmo Super Bowl together. Innocent times... sadly things wouldn't be so innocent years later when Mike ran down someone in his truck outside a bar. I can't say I never wished ill-will on him but I am certainly sad to have seen this sort of thing happen, so if you're out there Mike, I'm sorry for how things turned out for you.

This post is a lot of fun. I have a ton more ground I want to cover just from these early years alone...and this is the easy part! I am going to try and break this up over multiple posts, as I said, so I'll stop here and next time go into greater detail of my early struggles with women, finish discussing how my natural intelligence carried me through elementary school, and delve into the early part of high school, hopefully at least getting through my Dad's stroke that nearly killed him. Until next time...

Songs of the Second: (1992 edition - Sixth Grade School Dances!)
Stereo MCs - Connected
Kriss Kross - Jump
Pearl Jam - Jeremy
Boyz II Men - End of the Road
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under the Bridge
Spin Doctors - Two Princes

Detox Just to Retox (Dreams)

So this is going to be a pretty heavy duty post. I want to talk about dreams. Not the kind you have in your sleep, but the kind that keep life worth living. Yes, I know, this is beyond my usual post about girls and sports and the stuff that makes up the daily grind.

I've spent an ungodly amount of time in my life thinking about my dreams. In a discussion with my college roommate Sean (coincidentally one of the best friends in my life, but someone I haven't physically seen in around 6 years), we were catching up on things and we both said something along the lines of "same place I've been in for 8 years." Sean is a very successful person scholastically. He's probably the all-time best student that I've ever known, completing multiple degrees from multiple high-class academic institutions.

I on the other hand have spent the last 8 years doing a variety of odd jobs that some people would consider below my station intellectually. The truly ridiculous thing is even with all of this time to think about what my dreams truly are, I still have no idea what I want my life to look like in even 1 year, much less in 5 or 10. Once in a while, something emerges from my cloudy mental picture...a moment of clarity. On Monday, WKNR, the sports station here in NE Ohio put out a press release about a new host for the drive time shift, Michael Reghi. The press release was irrelevant mostly, but the contact information at the top had me thinking that maybe I would be better off leaving my sustainable but unfufilling job at Omnicare (where I am in line for a nice promotion within the next year) and heading off into the world of radio, no matter how mundane the entry level job might be. Why would that thought cross my mind? I've spent the last 4 years building up my status at Omnicare to be recognized and ultimately promoted. Leaving now seems incredibly stupid but at the same time incredibly logical. I proved what I wanted to prove and I can say with relative certainty that this is not what I want as a career.

Starting over is a scary thought but I am strongly considering sending an email to WKNR asking for a job doing whatever. Throughout my life one of the only enduring passions has been sports. I love sports, I love statistics, I love the excitement that comes with rooting for your favorite team in an important game. I love the meaningless May baseball games that play in the background at work. But most of all, I love the stories that come from sports, the triumph in the face of unbelievable odds, or even when the best effort isn't enough and you fall short.

I guess I look at life in a different way as I've aged. I've been so terrible at closing doors to various opportunities in my life. My talents have gotten me involved in many areas in which I could conceivably succeed or at least produce good work at a high level. The problem is that I don't like to just pick one path and stick to it because I'm afraid I would be happier doing something else. For most men, this materializes in a fear to commit in a relationship, but I've let it bleed into my entire life because I have such grand dreams. I'm always looking around searching for the next big thing to be interested in until something even MORE interesting comes my way.

I talked to my therapist (yes, I'm one of THOSE people) about things and he basically said that I'm still young and it's not that crazy to follow your dreams. I guess it's supposed to be hard. The inertia factor in the day-to-day grind is so high for people like me. I have a hard time taking the difficult path because the easy paths have always been there for me. The other thing that keeps going through my mind is just moving away and forcing myself to do something tough. I guess I need to make some decisions about where I want to be tomorrow rather than always over analyzing and thinking about where that decision will put me in 5 years.

My new mission is to work on making short-term goals and the decisions that go with them. One such goal is to brush my teeth at least 2x/day rather than just once a day. I used to be incredibly anal about my teeth but lately I've gotten lazy. I once wrote a very high-minded "goals for the next year" blog that pretty much was destined for failure because of my inability to concentrate on the minutiae and love of big picture thinking. So I'm now going to try a different approach.

Goals for the next week:
1. Brush teeth 2x/day
2. Go to the gym at least once
3. Write a letter/email to WKNR
4. Spend less than $50 on food (dinners at work, etc)
5. Organize bills (student loans, medical, rent, phone, car payment - know what is owed, when, and start prioritizing and reducing overall debt)
6. Enjoy Saturday (Rockband with the guys?)
7. Go to church on Sunday

Long Term Goals to focus on this month:
1. Financial Freedom (tighten the belt but avoid misery)
2. Spiritual Awakening (attend church and pray regularly)
3. Physical Maintenance (eat healthier and work out more)

Songs of the Second:
Radiohead - Karma Police (from the VAULT)
Bayside - Moceanu
Fall Out Boy - Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes
Pink Spiders - Gimmie Chemicals
Nickelback - Something in your Mouth (ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SONG)

Movie of the Minute:
Gran Torino