SSR: Iola, pt. 1
Do you remember the first kids you started to build any kind of relationship with? Your first "friends"...? I think that most of us do, but I'm certain that the details vary considerable from case to case. How you build friendships, for example... where you meet the kids in question, what kind of environment you're in as you connect, what your home life is like... even what kind of activities you get involved in together.
My youth involved a lot of moving about, or at least it felt like it at the time. The longest stint during my younger years was from mid-kindergarten to the Christmas of 1985, when I was in 5th grade. During this period, my family resided in the provincial Southeast Kansas community of Iola, about two-and-a-half hours from Wichita or Kansas City. It was basically a quite urban environment for that particular region of the state, home to around 7 or 8 thousand people, and it was possessed of a phenomenon that I have come to take for granted.
Neighborhoods.
Now don't get me wrong... I've often said that one of the interesting things about Wichita is that, from where we live in damn near the center of town, you could look around and think you were in the midst of any small-town Kansan community. Unless you can hear the highways or see the buildings downtown, this is true of much of the city. And yet, you don't just casually go jogging at night, nor do you leave your house or cars unlocked (or, God forbid, running in the driveway).
In the neighborhoods I grew up in, you could. It was small-town life with small-town people, and I played outside with the neighborhood kids until my mom stepped out on the porch and bellowed my name, which was an irrefutable summons to return to the homestead and face the dreaded prospect of whatever vegetable she had decided to include with dinner.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Chris. Misty. Nicole. Those were the neighborhood kids who were my age. We hung out, we walked to school together... but my memories of them are very disparate.
Chris lived at the end of the block. He had a younger sister named Carrie, who was epillectic and collected Barbies and My Little Pony. They had a bigger house and a lot of toys, and I hung out there quite a bit. As did my mother, though in retrospect I think his mom was kind of bitter company much of the time. His dad was real nice, but didn't stick around very long... after which there was another dude hangin' around a lot, and Chris's mom seemed to wear a lot less. My most profound memories of my time with Chris revolved around repeated chess matches (which he was frustratingly better at than I was, despite my father's expert instruction... which included a lot of kickin' my ass, I might add), Masters of the Universe shrinky-dinks (with which I was thoroughly enamored), and a Star Wars marathon in which we watched all three movies in sequence on videocassette.
Misty was the bad girl. As a 3rd/4th-grader, she was already obsessed with sex, despite the fact that she couldn't possibly understand the specifics. She had a very I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours kind of approach to life... which didn't really interest me much, but it was intriguing. Her bedroom was in an attic in a pretty rundown-lookin' house, and her parents were seemingly never around. She had an older brother who was a cripple, and seemed fairly bitter and lonely much of the time... but I'll be talking about him a bit later. Misty would help me involve the neighborhood kids in improvised little plays, would like to dress up in ridiculous accessories and such, and was generally a fun friend.
Nicole didn't so much hang out with the others. She lived with her mom and older sister and little brother in a neighborhood apartment complex. I probably had the tiniest bit of a crush on Nicki, and we hung out quite a bit. The first time I ever heard my voice played back to me was on a massive tape recorder we used to dick around with. We would host mock game shows for our younger siblings. She liked to play house a bit, but it was pretty innocent... I even remember that my first taste of grapefruit was in her kitchen, as was my first toasted marshmallow. And we would dance, jammin' out to her sister's 45's in the front room.
Where they are now, I have no idea... In this world of social networking and information accessibility, I've occasionally typed a name in here and there to see if anything popped up, but it's just a weird sort of curiosity. I haven't seen any of them since I was 10 years old; any remaining strand of spectral reality that lingers between us is thin and extremely ephemeral... and made of fairly outdated materials.
C'est la vie...
My youth involved a lot of moving about, or at least it felt like it at the time. The longest stint during my younger years was from mid-kindergarten to the Christmas of 1985, when I was in 5th grade. During this period, my family resided in the provincial Southeast Kansas community of Iola, about two-and-a-half hours from Wichita or Kansas City. It was basically a quite urban environment for that particular region of the state, home to around 7 or 8 thousand people, and it was possessed of a phenomenon that I have come to take for granted.
Neighborhoods.
Now don't get me wrong... I've often said that one of the interesting things about Wichita is that, from where we live in damn near the center of town, you could look around and think you were in the midst of any small-town Kansan community. Unless you can hear the highways or see the buildings downtown, this is true of much of the city. And yet, you don't just casually go jogging at night, nor do you leave your house or cars unlocked (or, God forbid, running in the driveway).
In the neighborhoods I grew up in, you could. It was small-town life with small-town people, and I played outside with the neighborhood kids until my mom stepped out on the porch and bellowed my name, which was an irrefutable summons to return to the homestead and face the dreaded prospect of whatever vegetable she had decided to include with dinner.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Chris. Misty. Nicole. Those were the neighborhood kids who were my age. We hung out, we walked to school together... but my memories of them are very disparate.
Chris lived at the end of the block. He had a younger sister named Carrie, who was epillectic and collected Barbies and My Little Pony. They had a bigger house and a lot of toys, and I hung out there quite a bit. As did my mother, though in retrospect I think his mom was kind of bitter company much of the time. His dad was real nice, but didn't stick around very long... after which there was another dude hangin' around a lot, and Chris's mom seemed to wear a lot less. My most profound memories of my time with Chris revolved around repeated chess matches (which he was frustratingly better at than I was, despite my father's expert instruction... which included a lot of kickin' my ass, I might add), Masters of the Universe shrinky-dinks (with which I was thoroughly enamored), and a Star Wars marathon in which we watched all three movies in sequence on videocassette.
Misty was the bad girl. As a 3rd/4th-grader, she was already obsessed with sex, despite the fact that she couldn't possibly understand the specifics. She had a very I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours kind of approach to life... which didn't really interest me much, but it was intriguing. Her bedroom was in an attic in a pretty rundown-lookin' house, and her parents were seemingly never around. She had an older brother who was a cripple, and seemed fairly bitter and lonely much of the time... but I'll be talking about him a bit later. Misty would help me involve the neighborhood kids in improvised little plays, would like to dress up in ridiculous accessories and such, and was generally a fun friend.
Nicole didn't so much hang out with the others. She lived with her mom and older sister and little brother in a neighborhood apartment complex. I probably had the tiniest bit of a crush on Nicki, and we hung out quite a bit. The first time I ever heard my voice played back to me was on a massive tape recorder we used to dick around with. We would host mock game shows for our younger siblings. She liked to play house a bit, but it was pretty innocent... I even remember that my first taste of grapefruit was in her kitchen, as was my first toasted marshmallow. And we would dance, jammin' out to her sister's 45's in the front room.
Where they are now, I have no idea... In this world of social networking and information accessibility, I've occasionally typed a name in here and there to see if anything popped up, but it's just a weird sort of curiosity. I haven't seen any of them since I was 10 years old; any remaining strand of spectral reality that lingers between us is thin and extremely ephemeral... and made of fairly outdated materials.
C'est la vie...