Last Day

Today is my last day in Pleasanton. I'll be back for winter break, and next summer, but it won't be the same.

I wanted to soak up every passing second of time left here. It's funny how you don't realize what you have you realize it's slipping away. You never know where you're from until you leave. Pleasanton has been good to me in the past twelve years, overall. It's been a ride.

The only place where time can be stopped or even reversed is the mind. Last night, that's where I went. I decided to rewind 4,438 days to June of 1996 and relive my time in Pleasanton, watching my memories through the windshield of my car.

Before I pulled out of the garage I stood in the street and took a long look at the house I've lived in. The same house I've come back to after a vacation in Barcelona, where I ran to from the bus stop after school in the pouring rain, where I played four square on the sidewalk, soccer on the grass, and Starcraft in the loft. Several meters away is Aubry's house.

I remember walking across the street in the summer heat to knock on the door and see if he could play. The glass door would always be unlocked, and on the comfortable warm evenings the glass was replaced with a screen. Scott would come down on his GoPed, and we'd play Zelda O.O.T., Mario Party, and Roller Coaster Tycoon. In the later years we had some great Halo parties in the garage. In front of his house is the street light that I knocked the glass out of when I threw a basketball at it, the same street light that I would later stand under when waiting for the Jeep to go skiing at 5 AM.

I turned my attention to the far end of the street, by the cul de sac where all of the street hockey games used to be years ago. Fourth of July parties and amazing fireworks were down there too. The whole neighborhood came out and watched the display. We had a ton of '08 kids around here, Aubry Conley across from me, Scott Baggett & Katie Carlstrom down a little further, Courtney Gangnuss across the intersection. Plenty of others used to be in the area, Antonella Janero, Matti Watt, Jaclyn Pang, Janelle Larson, T.J. Barkdull, Tay Centell, Caroline Lowry, Cory McDonald...I can't list 'em all but would like to. Some have moved, some have stayed, but I remember them all.

Got in the car, pushed in the clutch, shifted into reverse, and drove away. I'll be doing that again tomorrow, but I won't just be going out for a drive.

If you go down Tassajara towards Blackhawk quite some ways, you'll come to Highland Road. A dusty, winding two-lane through the hilly terrain of North Dublin, Highland is where I've gone to get away from my problems or to think about how I can fix them. This time I drove below the speed limit, taking in the golden light spilling over the hilltops. I had The Eagles playing, the best music for double-yellow cruiser roads.

"Dont let the sound of your own wheels
Drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Dont even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
And take it easy"

It really allows you to open your mind and let your troubles blow out the windows, drowned out by the sound of the engine and Don Henley. It lets you just kind of...take it easy. Couldn't be more fitting.

I spent over an hour and a half just driving. I turned whenever I had the urge to turn. When I felt like speeding up, I gassed it, and when I felt like slowing down I eased up. Ultimate freedom, no plans, no schedule, nowhere to be and nothing to do. No one else in sight. I ended up around Las Positas, and took the freeway home.

When I got back back I had a nice lasagna dinner. Damn good lasagna. Went to Jenelle's house for a few hours to chill with some other kids that are leaving for the Cal State schools tomorrow. Watched the Olympics for a while. I still wanted to go drive around some more so I left at around 1 AM.

...
Alisal

First place I went was Alisal. That is where it all started for me in this town, first grade in Mrs. Gould's class. I met a ton of kids there, I still know everyone in that class bar three or four. First person I met in class was a guy named Matt, he moved to Monterey at the end of the year, as I recall. Second person I met was Ben Anderson. Ben, Justin Maslana and I would play Star Wars out on the playground. Jessica McKinley was Princess Leia. I think it was Ben that got in a fight with some kid one time, and ended up with sand in his eyes, that sucked. It was a good single year there, though, we had a pajama party in class on a Friday night one time, that was awesome.

...
Mohr

The reason I say single year is because at the end of the year most of us moved over to Mohr. That's where I drove next. Mohr was awesome...I remember taking the tour there in the summer of '97 before it opened...everything was brand new. Those were the four square and tetherball days. I sucked at tetherball. Four square was sick, we always had crazy slam moves that usually ended with someone getting nailed by one of those red rubber balls. In fifth grade I drop-kicked one across the playground and it bashed Tom Morris on the head. That is the closest I've ever gotten to getting the living shit beat out of me. We're friends now, he lives in Alabama.

Soccer was cool too, soccer and football out on the field. Kris Stambaugh was playing goalie one time and managed to kick himself in the face, one of the most hilarious things I've seen to this day. I'd race Tay Centell out on the field too, but he'd usually kick my ass. He's in Southern California now. Also out on the field we had field day at the end of every year, when it'd usually be 50º and windy even though it was June. Everybody would end up totally drenched.

On the basketball court is where we had P.E. with Mr. Maz. Our class was incredible, most of our physical fitness test scores are still unbroken records posted on the wall in the multi-purpose room. McDonald, Lowry, Sweeney, Starkey, Hadlock...all records yet to be shattered. Maybe they were doping. After a game of capture the flag (the best game in the world, by the way,) Mr. Maz would shout "NEVER SMOKE." The whole class would reply "YES SIR." Most of us kept our promise.

Most of my teachers there have retired...Annen, Steyart, Crawley, Parker. Parker is the only one still working, I think, she's a principal at one of the other Elementary Schools here in Pleasanton. We were her last class, and that was, by far, the most awesome class I have ever had. Second floor of the then-new building, with a view of the quarry lake behind Martin, down at the East end of Mohr. That was the year we first had band, and DARE (although I never liked Officer Batoy, he never called on me.) Outdoor Ed. I could write a book on Outdoor Ed, so I'll just keep it in my head for now. It was hardcore for me, since the week before we left I had a major injury. I was running the bases in Scott Baggett's backyard when we were playing wiffle ball, and I caught my toe on a metal post stuck in the ground (they were re-doing the backyard.) It sliced down to the bone, so I did every hike at camp with six stitches and one of those goddamn boot things.

I remember graduating from Mohr, I felt kind of the same way I do now. I sat on the field and looked at my school for a long time, and then walked home down Martin on the new walking path. It was a hot day, mostly clear. I was unsure of middle school, but the best was definitely best to come.

...
Harvest Park

I drove back down Stoneridge and headed for Harvest Park. Now that I think about it, I had some pretty damn good times there. The first day of school I showed up in front of Ms. MacCleoud's science class (she was a real bright one, she gave us the answers to the tests BEFORE we took them.) There was a really tall kid standing there with a high-top haircut. I walked up to the door and all he said was "RENOB."

"What?"

"RENOB!"

"Uh..."

"RENOB. It's boner backwards..."

That was first impression of James Peters.

In sixth grade we had all kinds of new stuff to deal with. P.E., where everybody loathed running the mile every three weeks. Now they run it weekly. Band, getting up at six every single day. About two weeks into 6th grade I got up one Tuesday and when I went downstairs, my mom was sitting silently in a chair staring at the TV, with her hand over her mouth. I will never forget that look. When Blake's mom picked me up I didn't say much until we got to school. "Two planes have hit the World Trade Center towers in New York. They're about to collapse." They didn't believe me. Blake realized that I was very serious when three, five, ten other people said the same thing. They fell to the ground while we were running warm-up laps. That changed me forever.

Also in sixth grade was the laptop program. Gatehouse, Lars Hegstrom, Alex Kato, K.W. Kim and I went into Ragsdale's room every day at lunch and played adrenaline-filled games of F/A-18 Hornet and Bolo. Eventually, Ryan Brody and some other kids joined the crew. We'd all be cussing each other out, yelling across the room. The laptop classes were freakin epic, with Raimondi and Robeck. We had endless problems with the damn things, but it all worked out. Halfway through the year we moved all of Raimondi's stuff from the portables into the new room, where she still teaches. Robeck assigned 60 problems of Pre-Algebra a night, and it almost killed half of us. He had barbeques out on the blacktop for kids that got A's on the tests.

Seventh grade was even cooler, because we had the Medieval Fair, where everybody duct-taped up plastic swords and armor and beat the shit out of each other. That was serious gladiator stuff right there. Also in seventh grade, Ragsdale got some new eMacs, so Gatehouse and Hegstrom and I basically skipped a whole day of school to set them up. We installed Jedi Knight on all of them, I still have a copy of that game that Ragsdale gave me. He retired a year early because of his Parkinsons, moved up to Sparks, near Reno. I'll catch him on AIM every couple of months. For english, I had Mrs. Wilder, who was passionately despised by most of our class. She made Lizzy Harford cry when she sent a few of us to the office for forgetting to print an essay.

I still go back there every year, with Scott, to teach "boot camp" to the incoming sixth grade laptop kids. We do two five hour sessions to train the kids, and a two to three hour session to answer all of the parent's questions. We've been back I think five years, built up some serious connections with management at Apple, where I think I might end up working sooner or later. We just did it again earlier this week.

We had Ms. Kennedy for eighth grade, who was a great teacher. Now she goes by Mrs. Valentine, and is on maternity leave for the second time since we graduated. One time she lost one of the fish in her fish tank, so some of the kids made up "LOST FISH" posters and taped them up around campus. She found the fish buried at the bottom of the tank a few weeks later. On the last day of school, K.W. was agitated that he got a B+ instead of an A, so he smacked his huge Korean forehead into the glass door, shattering it. Ms. Kennedy was laughing but he still got a referral on the last day of school.

Eighth grade was also cool because in the winter, after our last class (Physical Science with Mrs. Jones,) Blake and I would go to Cassandra's bakery over by the Hopyard and get Lemon Tarts and Hot Chocolate, and then sit in his mom's car and play SNOOD on our laptops until his sister got out of dance practice. Good times.

Graduation was alright, but at the end of the three years of middle school I will still a nerdy little white kid. I wore a clip-on tie to the graduation commencement ceremony. That started to change at Amador.

...
Amador

Spinning my wheels over to Amador, where the parking lot was dark completely dark, I thought about the last four years. I've done that a lot this summer. The place has already changed, with the portables in a different place, the parking lot slightly re-worked, and those completely useless security cameras hanging off of the buildings.

I have too many memories at Amador to list them all, but there are some that stand out. A few weeks into Freshman year, a bird dumped on my backpack. I was pissed. At lunch that day, Joe Falls spilled a cup of marinara sauce on it (from the Dominoes breadsticks that they don't have anymore.) I was really pissed. Then, on the way home from the bus, Aubry decided to pick up a stick and smack my backpack with it. Of course, that was the only damn stick on the planet with a half-eaten peach stuck on the end of it, so I got peach glop on my backpack. I was furious. When I got home my backpack was like a cesspool with straps, it was disgusting.

I remember the football games. The one we one against Foothill in, I think, Sophomore year was when everybody jumped the field and I got buried under the mosh of football players and fans on the 35 yard line. Epic.

Sophomore year I had Tofanelli, which is when I met Eric Miller. Every day he'd come in and grab Matti's enormous sunglasses and Katie Gellerman's Starbucks, and walk around looking like Paris Hilton. By third period, he'd already had three Monsters so he was always wired. Now I have to deal with him at SJSU. I had Ekstrom too, that was funny. Ronnie Buckley, who I hadn't really talked to since the Mohr days, and Jeff Squire sat next to each other and wouldn't shut up. Ekstrom put them across the room, and they started using sign language and throwing things. Ekstrom would turn around and a barrage of Starburst wrappers would by flying over his desk. Aswin Kolady was there, too. One day when we were taking a vocab test, Aswin, who sat in front of me, tied my shoes to the desk. I got up and fell flat on my face. I have to laugh at it now, pretty sly prank.

Junior year sucked, except for Emerson's class and hippie day or whatever the hell it was called. Emerson literally shouted his lectures at us since he is deaf in one ear. We all got the notes, though. Aswin, Topher Mitchell, Andreas Rodriguez, and I all were in Hanson's Comp Sci class, and we'd all send each other our code on e-mail and play pocket tanks and DX Ball. I think I did a total of around ten days of work the whole year, and skidded by with an A-. He was a big star after the streaker hit the field during one of the rallies, since he was in the pursuit team with Scarpelli. That was the only time I've ever seen Scarpelli run, when he was going after that naked dude. He was a good coach though.

I ran track Sophomore and Junior year, and it was completely miserable. I loved it. "Pain is temporary, pride is forever," that was the quote on the back of our T-shirts. I won a couple races, ran 100M, 200M, and 400M. Unfortunately I had to drop out Senior year because I was having severe knee cartilage problems. I'd rather keep my knees till I'm 90, so I can keep skiing.

I don't need to explain much about Senior Year, it was amazing. Everything from Senior Picnic, when it was nut-shrinking cold, to the last night of high school, Grad Night, was just perfect. Experiences of a lifetime, indeed.

But it's all gone now.

...

All gone. I left Amador and drove downtown, and up Foothill, around to places I've been to so many times over the years. Good memories from all of them. After about an hour I headed home with only a quarter tank of gas. Time is infinitely more valuable than money, though, and my drive wasn't a waste of time, so I don't care about wasting the money on 3/4 drink of fuel.

It's all over now. Summer is ending again.

I'll let you on something kind of personal. There's a tradition I have had for years. Each summer, on the last day before school starts again, I sit on the highest peak of my roof, and listen to a song. One song. It is called "Boys of Summer," by Don Henley. Some of you may have heard the version by The Ataris, but I like Henley better because it's a slower, more apt tribute to another summer gone by:

"Nobody on the road,
nobody on the beach.
I feel it in the air,
The summers out of reach

Empty lake, empty streets,
The sun goes down alone.
I'm driving by your house
Though i know that you not home...

...

Out on the road today
I saw an AV sticker on a cadillac
A voice inside my head said don't look back
You can never look back

I thought i knew what love was
What did i know
Those days are gone for ever
I should just let them go and...

I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You know your walking real slow
Smiling at everyone

I can tell you
My love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone.

...

Now i don't understand what happed to our love
Now baby gonna get you back
Gonna show you what i'm made of...

I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got your top pulled down,
Radio on baby

And i can tell you
My love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone..."


Why this song? The lyrics carry a sad parting with summer, with friends, or someone else, and with memories that you just can't let go of. As I leave for college, they are shockingly close to my own situation. This next and final evening, I will sit up there on top of the roof that has covered my for the past decade, listening to Henley formally close the last summer of high school. I will watch the sun set, and with it, my past.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Tomorrow I will be in my seventh floor dorm at San Jose State. It will be an odd change of direction, having not moved for over twelve years. I'll definitely miss all of you, and all of my experiences here in Pleasanton. But I was born in Silicon Valley, though, so in a way I am leaving home to come home. I will be back to where I am truly from, surrounded by the hills of gold. Bittersweet. Bittersweet Symphony, this life.


The boys of summer are gone. I am gone. I'm free, but alone.


We're in college now.

So let's do this. Bring it.

Current Mood: Adventurous

Listening To: "The Story" by Brandi Carille