Places, part V

2002: UN Weapons Inspectors Entered Iraq, Attempting To Find Weapons Of Mass Destruction

I used to think I was so ready for 2002, so ready that it needed to be ready for me, because I was comin'.

Instead, 2002 was waiting for me in a dark alley with a crowbar.

In 2002 I felt like I'd fallen into a good groove at WVU. I was nineteen, I was passing my classes, I had a job and solid income from it, and I had finally chosen a major -- English. I chose it primarily because there was a Creative Writing track to the course of study, which would bypass several of the otherwise useless (to me) higher-level courses as well as award me what was, in essence, a minor in Creative Writing. I excelled at literature courses, most of the classic literature courses featured books and plays that were in the public domain -- so I could download them for free from the internet -- or purchase a $2 paperback Dover Thrift Edition of them, and for the Creative Writing classes I could legitimately let my imagination work for me and didn't have to take final exams. After all, I'd wanted to be a writer, a creator, right? The major felt like a logical choice.

Plus, it helped that my aunt was the graduate school secretary for the department and gave me the inside track on who was teaching what and when, and could even get me some free books on occasion.

With that major plan on file and with me on track to complete my degree in four years, not five (as was becoming more common even then, what with people taking smaller courseloads and stretching out their education), I thought I was golden. Until, of course, I started getting the questions.

"What will you do with an English degree?" Teach, write, do as little as possible and make money.

"Is there any money in that?" Not really.

"Do you want to write? Can you write? Can't you do that without a degree?" Yes, sort of, and yes, but only if you're really lucky.

I was asked one or more of these questions, sometimes all of them, almost every single day. This was the early 2000s; you wanted a business degree, an engineering degree, a computer science degree -- that's what people expected out of me. Those were the "hot majors." Even my previous choice of psychology sounded better than majoring in -- as people said and perceived -- was "the language you already speak." When I tried to explain the degree was much more than that, I was waved off as a joke or a slacker.

Whatever, man -- ain't nothin' gonna break my stride and all that. I smoked a lot of stress cigarettes in 2002.

As I was entering my coursework, I started to spend more and more time online. I had just gotten a new computer for "Christmas," which was really code for "because you started college and your old computer was six years old and vastly underpowered" -- an HP Pavilion, gray and purple, and $799 at Walmart...with a printer. 128MB of blazing fast RAM and a 40GB hard drive meant that I had finally leapt into the 21st century of computing. I still had dial-up internet, but in rural West Virginia...meh, what could you do? Ya couldn't have it all, you know. Even better, the new computer ran Windows XP, the newest and fastest at the time, and it had a CD-RW drive -- finally, I could download music and burn CDs. I could make backups on disc of all of my important files. I could do everything I needed to do with ease.

Because I spent more time than ever online (thank you, unlimited internet access and dedicated phone line), I was constantly on AOL Instant Messenger -- AIM, as mentioned in my last post. Most of my communication was done via AIM, and I began slowly reconnecting with people from high school as well as a few new friends I'd made in college in classes or in/around the student union. It was easy for a smoker to make friends -- stand outside long enough and someone will come up to you to bum a smoke. When they do, you strike up a conversation with them. After a few chance meetings, you really begin talking and/or start hanging out, and a group forms -- they bring their friends along, and a sort of community is started over the course of a few weeks or months.

I met most of my friends this way. And, much like junior high and high school, we formed a band of Freaks. Except this was college now, so our band of Freaks had people with multiple piercings and tattoos, multicolored hair, studded leather jackets, etc. For the first time, I had many openly gay, bi, trans, or pansexual friends. All of us came from all walks of life and even from different states and countries. For the first time in a long time, as we all settled in and got to know each other, I felt like I really had a group of supportive, caring friends again -- a family away from my family, people who were there for one another, had experiences with one another, inside jokes, references, stories -- I finally found a cast of characters I could fit into, after so long.

I was not the official "leader." I'm not sure we actually had one. But if there was an unofficial leader, I certainly filled and played the part. I was a matchmaker, I was the one who facilitated connections, I was the one who kept the main group together. And a lot of that was done on my home time hours, across AIM and AIM chat rooms.

There was a big difference, though -- all of these people lived in Morgantown, either on-campus or off campus. Most of them had vehicles, as they had to be able to get to and from work and school somehow. Most of them lived pretty closely to one another, too -- either in the dorms or shared apartment complexes or what have you. I lived twenty miles away, on top of a mountain, at home with my parents; additionally, unless I was off work that day, my schedule dictated class, a short bit of break time between classes (only some days) and then to the lab or back up the mountain -- leaving very little wiggle room for socialization most times.

Even though I felt good about my college career (at this point, anyway) I still suffered from burnout at times -- I would look for excuses not to leave the house to go to work or campus, and if a class didn't have an attendance policy and put all of its study notes online in PDF or PowerPoint, then I wouldn't go to it except for the exam days. Outwardly I was fine. Inwardly I was struggling. I was constantly tired -- I would come home, eat something small, and go straight to bed at 6PM, then get up around 2 or 3 and do whatever work needed to be done before I went to campus the next morning. I installed a coffee pot on my computer desk and used the shit out of it. I would stuff a towel or blanket under my door in the winter months, set the fan to blow out the window, and chainsmoke while typing up papers and talking to friends on AIM -- much to my parents' chagrin. I did more socializing online than offline. Faster computer and faster internet meant a faster life.

But burnout is a bitch, and I was charging straight for it.

I don't remember when or why I started drinking. I was never really a drinker before, even when I'd had the opportunity, and severe alcoholism ran in my family (both sides, from what I've been told). I just remembered that it slowed me down and the effects of a few drinks would increase the buzz from a cigarette tenfold; it made it much more enjoyable to smoke, instead of just out of habit and out of needing nicotine.

It started small at first. The student union had a bar and a pool hall in the basement, and they started selling draft beer at 10AM. I wasn't even 20 yet, let alone 21, but this was a bar in a student union pool hall; they didn't necessarily care about carding people. I also looked older than I was, especially if I grew out my beard somewhat, and very rarely would anyone question me. So it started out there. I'd drink two beers on an empty stomach after being wired on coffee since the middle of the night when I got up, and would get a nice buzz before class. If I didn't have class or didn't have to work until the afternoon hours, some of the older people in our group would get a pitcher or three, and we'd play pool for hours on end as long as I could be there.

I would like to stop here for a moment to note that I have an addictive personality, and this all became a problem for me very quickly. There are large chunks of 2002 and 2003 I don't remember. I say this because I wasn't necessarily blacking out, per se, just that I was such a drunk sometimes that time just escaped me. I will piece together what I can of these years here, but a lot of it is simply a blur, and it didn't take long for this to happen.

Things...escalated. I guess that's the best way I can describe it. Soon I was no longer just drinking ill-gotten beers in the student union, but drinking a lot at home too. First it was a shot here and there, then I began keeping beer in my room next to my desk (my parents were always well-stocked with various alcohols, so it wasn't seen as weird or anything). I grew a fondness for Southern Comfort, which my dad drank as well, and as it was always in the house, I could easily get lit. Southern Comfort, vodka, some occasional tequila and rum, etc -- it was all the same to me. Whatever I could drink, my body (and psyche) wanted it. I purchased a flask, overpriced as it was, from the record store on campus and always kept it on me. There was always something in it; I would tilt it back in the bathroom or in an empty hallway or classroom or what-have-you -- it was hidden.

For some reason I was not a social drinker (aside from the pool-hall beers). It was like a dirty secret that I never let anyone else in on. Some of it was shame, some of it was classic addiction behaviors. I never drank before work or at work, because I thought that to be classless drunkard behavior; I was a more, shall we say, upscale alcoholic. I kept mints and a toothbrush/paste in my bag, and always had some aftershave or extra deodorant or what-have-you on hand so that I could cover up any smell of alcohol. I found that Axe worked pretty well for this too.

Nobody ever asked any questions, and if anyone ever suspected anything they never let on. There were a great many classes I went to with a good buzz on, and several presentations I gave that way as well. I would actively tell people I was not a drinker or a partier (the second part, at least, was true) and that I didn't get out much because I worked a lot and had a lot of classes to worry about. While that was true as well, I also feared that in a party scenario I would lose complete control, black out, do things I shouldn't, etc. As a control freak, I really internally wrestled with that; I needed to be in control of everything at all times, and when I had enough alcohol in me, I couldn't trust myself that I would be.

I'm sure this says any number of things about me, psychologically speaking.

In fall 2002, myself and a group of friends started the WVU Anime Guild, which later became the WVU Japanese Animation and Manga Society (WVUJAMS). I wrote up a charter and a constitution for it when I should've been reading middle-English Chaucer texts for a big paper I had for that class (one of my least favorite classes of my entire college career). The Guild was made up of a group of nerds -- we preferred to call ourselves "geeks" at the time -- and eventually became an official WVU organization. At the time it was simply a group of us using a piano lounge on campus with a large TV in it as a viewing room, and randomly recruiting others who would wander by or see one of our flyers in a hallway somewhere, and stop in. As a founding member I took one of the low-ranking posts and let my friend Ben run the show for the most part. I did not have the time, or the energy most of the time, to devote to running an organization -- and I didn't live on campus, which meant that if I had an exam the next morning or a big paper due that I needed to finish, I wouldn't be able to be in town late that night for the meeting. There were many meetings I missed in that first year or so -- we held them on Wednesday nights, from 7 to 10 or so. Sometimes they'd start a bit earlier, sometimes they'd run later. My mind was already shot most of the time from classes, work, and...well, the drinking, so I was frequently a spectator that first year and not one of the prime-time players.

Weekends were spent at home for the most part; I would meter out my schoolwork during the week and kept a meticulous planner -- this is also how I would remember things that alcohol would otherwise make me forget. I always knew exactly what my tasks were for my classes and when my assignments were due, so I would always know what day I would need to be working on them. Because I slept weird hours during the week, when I could actually rest on weekends I felt like dying if I was forced to get up. I began keeping empty Gatorade bottles next to my bed so when I needed to pee, I could just roll over and pee in the bottle, then seal it and roll back over to go back to sleep -- getting up and walking to the bathroom would wake me up enough to where I'd never fall back asleep.

I also realize this sounds disgusting and terrible, and it is, but I had to be able to get some real rest. The box springs on my bed were broken as well and falling in (I wouldn't get a new bed until the year before I moved out of my parents' house) so it made getting quality sleep that much harder.

If I left the house on the weekends, it was only to go grocery shopping with my mother, and that was generally only so that I could either get more cigarettes or food that was by all accounts as equally unhealthy -- I was not the person then that I am now, and my diet at the time consisted of alcohol, snack foods (chips and the like), ramen, fried things, and salami sandwiches. Rarely would I eat fruits or vegetables, rarely would I ever get any real exercise -- I'd stopped riding my bike by that point -- and I was getting fatter by the month. Of course, I noticed this, and it made me more depressed, and (of course) made me drink more.

I would question, many times, why I was actually in college. I wasn't doing what I wanted to do with my life, the classes I was taking (for the most part) in 2002 were the core classes that had nothing to do with my major, but were required for all majors, and I always felt as if I was killing -- or wasting -- time. Sure, I was better off than my high school acquaintances who had joined the military straight out of high school in June 2001...three months before 9/11...but that was a small comfort only.

I turned 20 in December 2002. I don't remember it. My parents generally took me out to dinner, to the closest Olive Garden (in Pittsburgh), and we would do Christmas shopping afterward at Century III Mall (remember when malls were a thing?) By 2002, Century III was already on the decline (it is now completely closed down with the exception of JCPenney, and is set to be demolished in the near future), so I don't remember whether we went there or not. I was always a big fan of Burlington Coat Factory, which had a massive store next to the mall, but by then it was also on the decline and didn't carry much of anything I wanted to wear anymore.

For Christmas that year, my parents got me the reissued Danelectro Convertible Pro in what I now know, in my adult research, as the color tone "Blueburst."

I still own the guitar and it plays beautifully; it's also worth a lot more now than it was when my parents purchased it; it is, as they say, collectible and rare -- apparently the blue one is really rare. It's not super-expensive or anything, but it's more than doubled in price compared to what was paid for it at retail.

I don't remember the end of the year; I wasn't in a great place anyway. What I do remember is that, upon finishing my third semester of college, I felt a great sense of relief that it was behind me.

Also, I was able to sell the unwieldy, 20-pound hardcover Chaucer book back to the bookstore for like $40, so go me.



2003: The US Invaded Iraq Without A UN Mandate, And The Iraq War Started

2003 was a year of great changes, both in myself and in the world. There was, after all, the above aforementioned beginning of a new war, and with it, cries and protests, millenials calling it as akin to this generation's Vietnam, etc. I went to a number of anti-war rallies on campus myself, actually. I remember them being sad, but loud, affairs.

"Sad, loud affairs" would be a running theme of 2003 for me. I mustered some optimism as I entered the spring semester in January, because I was finally getting into taking some of the classes I wanted to take -- sociology, anthropology, some of the actual creative writing courses, social work, and the like. I also took literature courses taught by some of my favorite professors in 2003, some of whom I am still friends with to this day.

If 2001 was a tumultuous year and 2002 was the year of alcoholism and (more!) depression, 2003 was a year of experimentation and discovery. I'd made friends, good ones, friends I'm mostly still in contact with today -- Herby, Adam, Jessica, Josh, Ben, etc -- and gathered a few more that have since dropped off the face of the planet after college. I had begun writing in earnest again, trying to piece together short stories and/or poems, or pitch ideas to comic companies (something I'd stopped doing for a few years). I also found myself, for the first time in my life, having strong political opinions and ideologies beginning to form, and that I was not a fan of George W. Bush. I became fairly liberal in a lot of my viewpoints, though I was always conservative on things like guns and government spending. To this day, even with all of the mass shootings that have happened as of late, I am still very pro-gun. It's not the guns, it's the people, and it's mentally-disturbed white men more than anything else.

I realize that I am a white man and could at times be classified as "mentally disturbed," but I'm not insane nor am I violent; I am, for the most part, a pacifist.

Anyway, I started 2003 with a revised outlook on life, or at least I tried to. I'd spent the winter break drinking rather heavily and glued to my computer, keeping in contact with my friends through AIM and distracting myself from the rest of the world. I switched to beer for the most part and found that it would take far more of them to actually get me drunk, and therefore I would (theoretically) drink less or "drink more healthily" by eliminating the harder alcohols -- this was spurred on by what is still referred to by my parents as "the rum incident," in which I drank an entire bottle of rum and ate half of a red velvet cheesecake in the span of about two hours during their Christmas party, and led to a vomiting fit that lasted most of the night afterwards. My brother and best male friend Michael were witnesses to some of that sickness.

For me, that was rock bottom. At the time. I needed to stop, I needed to end it. The thought of hard alcohol made me ill after that night, and beer had become just beer -- I could distance myself from it, I didn't need it to function or anything like that. So, slowly, I stopped drinking. I got rid of the flask -- the flapper top was beginning to leak anyhow -- and once I had distanced myself from most alcohols of any and all sorts, I was able to pretty much stop completely. To this day I really don't drink outside of the occasional beer or mixed drink -- and only when it's rare and appropriate, or part of an event. I learned my lesson all of those years ago and have only occasionally fallen off the wagon since.

I'd well settled into college by spring 2003, but I was still lonely. I'd never been able to find love, or a real girlfriend of any sort. I wasn't even completely sure I was straight, and for a while did not identify completely as such. 2003 was a year of experimentation of all sorts, and I'll leave it at that.

There were women, of course. I had a sort of strained relationship with my female best friend, Brittany, who didn't go to WVU with me (well, she hadn't yet gone there at that point). We were very close, yet she and I hadn't seen each other in some time. We kept in contact via AIM and letters/emails, kept journals for one another, etc. I'd known as early as the beginning of 2002 or so that I was falling for Brittany; we'd gone to high school together and had gotten close then, but she'd had a boyfriend at the time. She'd had a close friend at her own college who had recently died, and she fell in love with his friend afterwards (they actually ended up having a storybook romance and getting married a few years later, and are married with a kid to this day). Brittany and I had mutual feelings for each other, but it would never be in the cards for us. When she found her now-husband and they began their relationship, I won't say I wasn't hurt, but I also was not going to stand in their way. I remember being bitter and jaded about it because I didn't really know how to process it.

Brittany and I fought a lot; truthfully, I don't know why or how she put up with me not just as a friend, but as a person, during those times. When I was drinking I was not a nice guy, and had a tendency to slip even more into depression and "poor me" self-wallowing; I also had a sense of entitlement that cut like a knife as well, and that didn't help much either. I was invited to her wedding but did not attend; while I was indeed working that day, I can't help but think even now that, deep down, it was really because I was being stubborn and bitter, jealous that it wasn't me.

In the years since, I have matured and have become much more level-headed; Brittany and I are still friends to this day, but we differ drastically in our political views and opinions, and have seen each other but once or twice in person since college. Our friendship would grow apart further and further as the years went on, though she did get me and the wife our Keurig for our wedding present. Falling out of constant contact with her is something I regret.

But I digress.

In March 2003, I needed an outlet to vent my thoughts and practice my writing. Blogging wasn't even called blogging yet, or if it was, it wasn't what it became in the following years. LiveJournal was around, but it was pedestrian and too bogged down with too many users. I wanted someplace of my own that would be quieter, I could invite readers to follow, and I could make look and feel the way I wanted it to. That was DearDiary.net. I don't know, exactly, how I found the site -- I don't remember, really -- but I started a diary there. It was called, from the beginning to its end, The Criminally Goofy. I'd found the phrase in a review of one of the Ramones' records from the '80s, and co-opted it for my own use.

Within a year, out of 28,000 running active diaries on the site, mine was the most popular. I was getting 15,000 hits a month. I was interacting with all of my readers and "fans." All of my friends at WVU were intensely interested and it was like must-see TV when I posted a new entry. And I wasn't saying anything out of the ordinary -- I was telling stories about my daily life, about interactions I had with the people I knew. I had a cast of characters as well -- I would use the diary as a medium for discussions with my "gay guardian angel," Leonard, for example. I would have conversations with The Fates, who generally "sent" me letters that were written and sounded like office memos, etc. It was as much theatre as I could muster on a single webpage, and people loved it.

I met a lot of people through The Criminally Goofy, some who stayed in my life longer than others. I even inspired a few friends to start their own diaries on there, to varying degrees of success. Cathy kept a diary on there and kept it running long after I shut mine down, for example.

However, there's one friend I met through that site that I've been very close to almost since that diary's inception, and that is my friend Jae.

I will always refer to Jae as Jae in writing here (or anywhere else), even though that's not her real name -- we both have our reasons for that and she is an intensely private person. Jae and I were acquainted early and often through that site, from reading and commenting on one another's posts, and formed a friendship that soon spread to email, AIM, phone (and, later, Facebook). I always saw Jae as a kindred spirit, a soul split off from mine -- or, at the very least, coming from the same sort of soul stock I came from. While I had suffered from some pretty extreme depression issues, Jae dealt with, shall we say, a lot more than that -- something she never shied away from talking about but definitely something I don't speak or write about lightly as it is not my place to discuss it.

Over the years, Jae became a very close friend and she is one of the very, very few people I've known for as long as I have that I've not only never met in person, but have remained in near constant contact with; I just sent her an email this morning, in fact. She and I don't talk anywhere near as much as we used to, though -- life is life, and it's funny like that sometimes.

Because of my diary I was able to begin to feel a bit more confident in myself and as a person -- as I mentioned, there were women in my life. I'd chat them up, and when I felt it was appropriate or if someone mentioned it in passing, I'd eventually let them see the real me and give them the link. I was not shy about any of it, really; my diary was about the only exhibitionist side I had as the rest of my life I was intensely private about. It also gave me a way to be social with people outside of being in person with them -- they'd read my posts, shoot me an instant message, and then we'd talk. This wasn't just limited to college folk; I had many people who would IM me out of the blue saying they'd found my diary and liked it; we'd generally talk for a few days or weeks and then go our separate ways again. It's like I was a minor internet celebrity.

The diary did alienate some people too, of course; some acquaintances from high school read it and weren't necessarily big fans of me, but I at the time thought that was jealousy. 2003 was like the toddler years of the internet. Nobody had any real caution or secrecy then. Thinking back on some of the stuff I shared about my life then completely mortifies me now. But, it was what it was. Some people got me, and some people didn't. Some family members learned way too much about me, some didn't know the diary existed. My parents knew of its existence but I made sure they could never find it. If they ever did, they didn't tell me about it.

To this day I still have most of the entries saved as full webpages. An excerpt:


2 Jun 2003 - I Have a Fan!

10:58 AM Monday
CURRENTLY WEARING: Green Lantern t-shirt (yes, the same one), green boxers (yes, the same ones).

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Premium Blend on Comedy Central.

CURRENTLY DRINKING: Coffee, as soon as I get a cup from the kitchen.


So wait till all of you hear this. I'm sitting at my computer last night (where else would I be, hmm?) when, out of the blue, a fellow diarist whose diary I have been reading on a regular basis, IMs me and thanks me for the supportive comment I left in their diary. This turned into a 5 and 1/2 hour conversation in which I thoroughly enjoyed, and during which this diarist told me how they like my diary...teehee! I have a fan! Who is this diarist, you may ask? Why am I being so secretive about their name? Because I was asked to be secretive and I don't want to betray their privacy. :) I'll just say that the conversation made me really happy. Kinda made me feel like I'm famous or something, like I'm being approached in public by my fans. I was positively giddy. I still am to some extent. I have made a new friend. Okay, so it's an online friend. Still a friend. I don't make friends that easily. That's why I'm happy.

So what else is new with me? Well, B and I had a fight yesterday. Then last night we fixed things up. She actually apologized first, which amazed me. Usually I'm the first to apologize about anything, regardless whether I'm at fault or not. I whip out heartfelt apologies like I'm drawing a pistol at the O.K. Corral. I think I'm overly apologetic in all situations, regardless of whether or not I'm at fault. I think it's a way to escape the situation so that I don't have to deal with it.



And so on.

The "fan" I was referring to, amusingly enough, was Jae. B was my friend Brittany. I gave many people codenames or letters for their names, except for the ones who personally told me that they just didn't care. Over the course of 2003 alone I probably wrote 100 posts or more. My writing style was far less refined then, and I was far more whiny and bitchy. My posts were also far shorter than these ones -- DearDiary.net didn't have a save option, so if I wanted to write a longer post that I couldn't finish in one sitting, I had to save it in a Word document to come back to later, lest I risk losing it if my internet dropped connection or something else happened.

In fall 2003, I became vice president of the WVU Anime Guild, as I had a bit more time after cleaning up my core classes. My best male friend, Michael, would stay late in town for the meetings with us and then I'd ride back up the mountain with him (I went to high school with Michael, and he lived a few miles down the road from me). Michael was -- and I'm pretty sure still is -- gay. Really gay. He was the first gay friend I really had in my life, and he was just beginning to figure it out himself. When we first started college together, he was all about girls; he'd fallen in love with a girl (I can't remember now who it was, but it was someone we knew) and she'd rejected him, which made him morose. He gradually began to open up his opportunities; he first came out as bi, and then later confirmed that he was, yes, completely gay, and somehow he'd always known that. I was progressive enough at the time to know that sexuality wasn't just about the act, and made sure he knew I supported him and that he never had to feel like he needed to hide himself or who he was around me, or what-have-you -- and that extended to my parents, as well. My parents adored Michael, enough to where on nights when we'd come home late from the Guild meetings, they'd make sure he had dinner waiting for him at our house. Michael spent more time at my house than any other friend I've ever had; he was like a brother to me.

Before you ask, the answer is no. While I was experimenting and questioning my own sexual fluidity around this time -- something that I'm not going to discuss here -- Michael and I never did anything. It would've been really weird and I was absolutely not his type anyhow; he'd told me as much and I knew his type anyhow, and they were dudes who were the exact opposite of who I was. I wasn't offended by this, of course -- to each their own, and it's not like I was trying to get into his pants -- but I knew several people (both male and female) who were trying like hell to do so. One of them was a girl named Beth, who I was really into at the time; she didn't want me, she wanted my gay friend. Oh, sweet irony.

I did have my first sexual encounters in 2003, and am proud to say that I was sober by then. I'll leave it at that, but I'll say those encounters were fairly far from conventional ones. It is what it is, I'm not ashamed of any of it, but I'm also still a fairly private person and those involved don't need me telling the story to the public now, sixteen years later.

The early 2000s were a weird time, man. I mean, I bleached my hair and wore denim vests with Hawaiian shirts:

Outside the WVU student union, September 24, 2003

It's shocking to me how young I look in that photo, but that's me. Blonde hair and all, no glasses, no graying beard or vape in my hand, existential angst well-buried; it was a simpler time. I barely recognize that Brandon now. I used this as a profile photo as well as part of a banner photo for my DearDiary for years, even after I no longer had the blonde hair.

I also really miss that vest; I "lost" it at some point in one of my many moves after college and have no idea where it went. I'm sure it ended up in a Goodwill or DAV thrift store someplace. I want that Hawaiian shirt back, as well -- I ended up donating that in 2009 upon my move to Kansas.

I turned 21 in December 2003, and as I recall it wasn't particularly noteworthy. My parents always threw a Christmas/birthday party for me, and I remember that some friends were over (Michael and Brittany amongst them, I believe) but it wasn't a huge affair or anything of that sort.

After Christmas and the holiday break ended, I would start what I refer to as "The Glory Days of Brandon" -- but that's a story for the next, and final, post in this series.