Incoherent Ramblings and a Short Story

        My post yesterday has been one of my more popular ones so far. That's pretty cool. But today I have a major headache, so don't expect anything too profound. Just a little bit of profoundity. That's totally a word, don't worry about looking it up. Trust me, I 'm a person who says things on the internet for... not a living? 

       I've noticed a huge difference in numbers compared to my vlog and my blog. Which is weird to me, because I promote my vlog way more than this. That being said, watch my vlog: youtube.com/user/shran100. I think it's pretty good every now and then. 

       As I said, I have a massive headache right now, and feel like crap. 

      Ok. Alright. Let's do this thing.

      I joined a couple groups and liked a couple pages on Facebook about asexuality, and I have started my own specifically for Canadian aces! You can find at: facebook.com/canadianaces! Go check it out and become a member! Lets create a thriving online community for Canadian Aces! And a safe one of course. 

     Apparently this post doesn't have a coherent theme, Or an incoherent one. 

     I'm trying to force myself to post daily on here, simply because it's a good writing exercise. I usually enjoy it, and I usually have something to say, but between my head pounding and pets I can't focus on anything at all. Maybe today will be a short post. Or!!! I can cheat today! Here's a short story entitled "Mondays":

Mondays, man, Mondays. I’d say that they’re the bitch of the week, but that’s not PC anymore. This whole politically correct thing has really toned down what I can call things. I don’t know…

            Monday! Mondays suck righteous balls. Now, I know everyone “hates” Mondays, and that a fat cat in the 70s made it cool to do so, but come on. Are Mondays really that bad?

            Yes. Unequivocally yes.

            “But James,” you say, “why are Mondays so bad? Wouldn’t any other day be just as bad?” Now, this is a really odd thing to say, especially since my name isn’t James. It’s Todd. How fricking hard is that? Is fricking PC? Can I say that? Oh well.

            But since you asked so politely, even though you called me James, I will answer the question with a story. Not a short concise answer, you guys are jerks so you get a story.

            It was seven years ago, on this very day—ok, ok, so it wasn’t exactly seven years ago, this is for dramatic effect ya knobs—that I, Todd Matheson esq., experienced the worst Monday in human history since the one where Joan of Arc decided to take a walk outside. Don’t ask, again it’s for dramatic effect. I, Todd Matheson esq., was at school.

            My school was a dreary place full of squares trying to be circles, if you catch my drift. There were the rich hippies on one side, and the poor snobs on the other. And the stoners. Every school ever has the stoners who just don’t give a single flying flip. And since the stoners don’t care, this is the last time I’m going to mention them. Heh, stoners. Wait. I wasn’t supposed to mention them again. I lied to you, and for that I am truly sorry.

            My school was mega lame, that’s what I’m getting at. And this particular Monday was even lamer than the all the others.

            This was the Monday that I died.

            Man that would be a terrible Monday. Obviously I’m not dead. But damn, that sounded hella cool.

            Anyways, this Monday started off as a normal, boring Monday. I got off the bus, breathed in the fresh, yet slightly toxic from decades of pollution, air, and promptly fell on my face. The juniors literally walked on me to get off the bus. To top it off, my crush, the babeilicious Jeannette, saw everything.

            I walked into the school, my appearance and soul sullied and humbled from my tumble. Rhymes are cool. Crestfallen, I, Todd Matheson esq., put my things into my locker and continued on with my day.

            I’m not going to bore you with the deets of my morning, ya’ll aren’t that big of jerks, so let’s skip ahead to lunch.

            Mexican Mondays, not to be confused with Taco Tuesdays and Taquito Thursdays, was a cafeteria favourite. There was a build your own fajita stand (wrap, lettuce, cheese, mystery meat, questionable salsa, and three week old peppers), and chili with rice. I made my favourite Monday meal, a fajita with cheese and chili, and headed to my table full of other like-minded denizens of the school. We were the nerds, alright. Just be cool. God. As I travelled through the perilous and fragrant hippie controlled lands, something dreadful happened. Truly dreadful. I was full of dread. Or the dirty hippie who tripped me was. Ha. Oh. I should explain. The guy had dreads. Which led me to making that dreadful pun. I’ll let myself out.

            I tripped over his foot like Paula Deen tripping over her mouth. I flew forward. But in a slightly downward trajectory. I landed face first on my chili fajita. Meat and beans flew out, splattering all near me. If anything, it improved their smell, and they should’ve thanked me. Instead they literally tossed me out the door.

            I spent the rest of the day, covered in dried chili. With every gulp of air, all I got was chili. Every breeze gently wafting past me held the dubious honour of smelling like chili.

            And then the literally worst thing to ever happen, happened. Like. This was an extinction level event. The babeilicious Jeanette came up to and told me that she felt bad for me. And then. Oh boy. Oooooh booooyy. And then she kissed me. Right on the old mouth hole. That sounds weird. She kissed me right on the lips. And as she pulled away, she gave me a little smile and said, “I’ve always liked chili.” She winked and walked away.

            My first kiss, and I was coated in beans.

            And this is why Mondays are the absolute worst of all time.

            What do you mean that’s a stupid reason?  

My first friend, with love and loss

     My question mark is working... who thinks I can go through a whole blog without using i... this is not promising.
     My last two blogs have been fairly serious. One was about narcissism and art, the other was about terrorism and the negative affects upon society that hate has. This one should probably be less serious.
      Maybe I should go with something funny and lighthearted! Technically I should've used a question mark there, but I went for a dramatic effect instead. Don`t question it, I`m an artist.
      Instead of any of that, I am going to share with you a section from my memoir, which is what I am currently writing. The following section is about my first real friendship, and how it shaped my entire life. Ashley was the first person to read it, and she loved it. I hope you all enjoy it as well.

Ashley was my first best friend. Probably my first friend period since we were the same age and neighbours, but saying she was my first best friend doesn’t sound as sad. I mean, I don’t want people feeling sorry for me yet. That’s reserved for future chapters!

Ahem. Back to the topic at hand: Ashley. Ashley was a lot like me. We even kinda looked alike (sorry Ash): wavy light blonde hair, bright eyes, our families dressed us alike, it was uncanny. I have a habit of showing people a picture of Ash and I when we were around three and asking them to point out which one I was. Much to the belittling of my already belittled ego, they often point at Ashley. I’m sure I would get a much different answer with a more modern picture (at least I’m sure Ashley hopes I would), but I enjoy my little game that allows people to take shoots at my fragile male ego.

(this is the picture. I’m on the right. I think)

We were neighbours with her grandparents, and through some stuff that is none of anyone’s business, she often stayed with them. All this time with her grandparents allowed us to spend copious amounts of time with each other. We would run around the backyard, eat cookies, drink lemonade, and everything else proper southern children were supposed to do.

Don’t look at me like that. Nanaimo is pretty south for Canada.

She was always there, and for those few years in Nanaimo, we grew up together. The foundations of who we would become were laid in our time spent together, and it would be evident, years later, that both of our foundations were fairly similar. We would both grow into the people that we are today based on the experiences and lessons we learnt together at that young age. She was my first best friend, she is my oldest friend, and to this day she is still my sister.

On a weird segue from that emotional paragraph, into something which may seem slightly incestuous now: she was also my first kiss. She says I initiated it. I’m pretty sure she did though. I was, and am, a gentleman and a scholar, and would never dream of kissing a lady without her express permission.

I was… three? Sure. We’ll say three. Ashley and I were hanging out in the massive backyard, sitting on one of the Harleys. I was looking fly as hell (as fly as anyone could in the early 90s) with my khaki shorts, white sun hat, and yellow framed shades (possibly the same ones I stared that cop down with). I was sitting in front, it was my Hog after all, and she riding behind. She looked nowhere near as fly I did. It would have been physically impossible for anyone else to look that fly in that close of proximity. Probably would’ve caused an explosion or something. I was looking back her, chatting it up, playing it super cool, when she had the nerve—the audacity!—to lean forward and give me a quick peck on the lips! I was flabbergasted! I was quite literally gobsmacked! She smacked me right on the old gob!

Of course, if you ask her, she will say that I kissed her, and probably a tomes worth of other vile lies about my character. Like that I thought Theodore the Tugboat was cooler than Thomas the Tank. Thomas the Tank for life son! Although… Theodore the Tugboat was pretty ballin’.

My time spent with Ashley was probably the most significant and important part of my early childhood. I’m not kidding about that. After we moved to Gabriola Island in 1994, I didn’t hear from her for nearly fifteen years. This was the 90s. Calling people on a different island was hassle and expensive, the internet was barely public, and even mailing letters was hard to do. So we fell out of each other’s lives.

And for fifteen years I forgot how important she was in my life. How integral she was to my state of being.

 Then, one night in grade 12, I was sitting at my computer chatting with friends on MSN (MSN was like Facebook chat, but way cooler) and Facebook, when I got a friend request and a message from some girl. The message was basically this: “Hey. My aunt says that we knew each other when we were kids.”

Enticing. So I added her, and we began messaging back and forth. As we messaged all the memories came flooding back. The fact that I called her Ash and she called me Yak. The time spent outside in the perennial sunshine of our childhood. The fact that we hadn’t seen or heard from each other in a decade and a half was not a hindrance. We were as in sync as we had been when we were four. We began calling each other, and would just spend hours chatting, catching up on the past fourteen years. My parents and I went out to Vancouver that summer (2008) to spend time with family, and Ashley and I made plans to meet up and hang out for the first time since we were four.

She was still living in Nanaimo at the time, so she came over on the ferry with her grandma, and her aunt (the one that found me on Facebook), and we all reunited at Horseshoe Bay.

I don’t know how to explain that afternoon. When we saw each other, it was as if those fourteen years had never happened. We were as comfortable with each other as we had been all those years before. Our minds were in sync. We made the same jokes. We liked the same kind of pop culture. Listened to the same genres of music. Had the same opinion on all important matters (Harry Potter and Star Wars). We acted the same as each other. We even were dressed in the same colours (honestly, it was not planned).

We were like two sides of the same person. We even liked and disliked the same foods. It was uncanny how alike we were.

We spent that afternoon making obscure pop culture references, and some not so obscure, that neither of our families got, but we understood each and every one.

When I said that those early years laid the foundations of who we would become, I wasn’t being over dramatic, or exaggerating, I was simply stating a fact. We spent almost every day of our toddlerhood together, and then the next fourteen years apart, but when we were reunited we were almost identical. Those first four years of my life were not just the foundation; they were the complete blue print of my life. Everything that I would do, everything that I would come to love and enjoy, everything I am stems from those times spent with Ashley.

Which seems like an incredible burden to place on a four year old.

I felt like a whole person that afternoon. Like all my separate parts were rejoined. That evening, when they had to get back on that ferry, we said good bye. It’s an odd experience having to say good bye to someone that you haven’t seen in so long. Someone who shaped your very being, and then was lost for over decade. How in the cosmic realm is one supposed to say good bye to that person?

With ice cream cones.

Ice cream cones answer most of life’s most pressing and existential questions.

We got ice cream, slowly walked over to the boarding area, and tearfully hugged goodbye with promises to stay in better contact.

Saying other half sounds like I’m being romantic, but that is not the case. I have no memories of my early childhood that do not include Ashley, no important, life defining early age event that did not include her in some way. She was part of me, in the same way that siblings are part of each other.

Ashley is such a fundamental part of who I am, and I don’t know if I’ve ever actually told her that. To be honest, writing this chapter, short as it is, was extremely difficult. All kinds of emotions came into play, and I was flooded with old memories and more recent regrets.

We kept our promise for a while. Texting every day, calling once a week, but life, as it always does, tends to get in the way. Contact began to come more sporadically, it’s always there, but it’s a rare occurrence now. We needed to be in each other’s lives as toddlers, and we needed to be reunited on the cusp of adulthood, and we will eventually need each other again. But for now, we’re just stars in the night sky: always in sight, but never in contact.