sputnik sparrow: August 2011

i've never been very good at leaving the house. when i was little, i stayed indoors most of the time, reading. i read every thing--all my books, then i'd move on to the newspaper, then the glossy advertisements inside newspapers, then labels of household products, then i'd snoop in people's bathrooms for magazines. the outdoors was something you happened upon on your way to the bookstore or library. i'd read hatchet and deemed myself far more inexperienced than brian so i figured i'd just be good as dead if i were him and that me+outside=death. what i could always appreciate (i reread books... numerous times) was the ending: his walk through the supermarket, marveling at the selection and packaging of food. yes! yes! all the luxury's in here! no need to go outside!

here is where i grew up:

can you find my dad waving? also, waldo.

depending on your viewpoint it could be:

1. you hate the country

because you grew up there and you just hate it, man, and/or
because you went there once and totally stepped in a cow patty, and/or
because you got your heart broken by a naïve country girl who taught you how to love

2. you love the country

because you grew up there and still love there and there isn't any other place for you, and/or
because you're from the city and you have romanticized ideas of cowboys and a hard day's work of bringing in the cattle or whatever city people think of country-side, and/or
because it's so peaceful and quiet and omg there's a deer did you see that omg turn off the car don't scare it*

*see: Louis CK on deer

i'm like 1 1/2. i don't hate or love the country, it's just there. my brother and i had a huge yard to play in, so we ran through sprinklers, set up cans on a log and shot them with a BB gun, then a pellet gun, then a .410 gauge, then a 20 gauge, then a 12 gauge (actually the latter were more on my grandfather's farm, not our yard), we jumped on the trampoline, we swam in our pool, my brother told me about bigfoot living in our trees. we used chalk and a cardboard box to make a target for our bows and arrows. anytime we had more people, we'd play baseball. we had cookouts and watched the stars come out and we'd tell scary stories and scare ourselves even more by running through the cornfield (in long sleeves, of course). my cousins and our parents helped our grandparents bail straw in the summertime and i still remember riding on the wheel of the tractor next to kate and you could smell the dry smell of the straw and feel the sun on your eyelids. we'd walk around my grandparents' barns and my favorite smell is still that barn, the musty smell of hay, the concrete floors worn where cows had stood, being milked while my mom and aunt and uncle fed them. we could sit in the grass, hot and sticky and even the grass is hot, you can roll in it and feed the dry blades, brown at the top, tickle your nose. you feel the ground for the cool soil, blowing dandelion seeds for wishes.

part of my grandparents' farm. it just reeks of childhood memories.

in the winter we'd bundle up, walk out the the end of the driveway to wait for the school bus. the snow was always over my knees. we rescued petey from the snow one winter and inside he stayed.

i got older, i drove 15 minutes to high school every morning and sometimes i was late because i was stuck behind a tractor. the whole school district came to the friday night football games where i cheered. at half-time i'd get a water from the concession stand and find tom, who was largely ignoring everyone else in the crowd, and we'd sit and complain about everything. driving home from a football game, i hit a deer that was already dead. it made both the tires on the right side of my car flat, and i just barely made it to perform in the canfield fair the next morning.

i graduated high school and i sat in a white robe during the commencement and wished i'd smuggled in a book. the speaker was a lady (Jerri Nielsen) who'd survived breast cancer while in antarctica--operating on herself to remove it--and she was born in salem, the next town over. at one point she addressed us and said something along the lines of how we needed to learn how to swim, because if we're out in the ocean somewhere and don't know how to swim, we'll drown. i started laughing and someone gave me a dirty look. i felt bad when i heard that the speaker had died when the cancer came back.

i went to college in kent, ohio and i was happier, i felt, to be in a bigger city, although it only has 6,000 more people than alliance. still, i was out of the moo-moo country. i met a lot more people i'd liked than the people from high school. i made the association of bigger city=more people=happier and figured i'd live in a huge city one day. i also moved in with a glamorous piece of work: jess. jess was so exotic (half-indian), cultured (visits india every couple years), gorgeous (HALF-INDIAN, people, HELLO), intelligent (the woman researches everything and has most excellent skills of deduction), philanthropic (worked at a camp with children with autism, volunteered at an abortion clinic, raised money for breast cancer), political (i'm not even going to touch this one), adventurous (went casually hiking through some mountains like it was no big thing), the list goes on and on. do you find people like that in the country! no, sir! (nevermind that jess did grow up closer to bumpkin than skyscraper).

we ohioans are funny. we're the first to admit ohio is kind of crap but we defend it to the death. i personally think the greatest thing about ohio has always been and will always be the people. my family, my friends, random people walking down the street, we are so freaking friendly and interesting it will shock you. it's a shame that there is so much failed industry in ohio. i think that's what people know/notice first about us. but there are cities in germany that are strictly known for its industry and that's all. as if nothing else really exists or matters. i think there must be something if you look closer. and ohio is a lot like that; you can't look at the crumbling brick warehouses or the neon signs advertising used cars. you have to look at the people and the relationships. i had some really terrible relationships in ohio, and i've had some incredible relationships in ohio. i miss these people all the time. just look at us!