27.01.10....idiot sanctuary

The rest of the years were good enough, though I did settle into a routine. Hating my classes, saying the wrong things to get kicked out once every other month, was one of the more prominent traits I further developed. I battled with teachers that told me I had potential if I would just focus myself. I fell in with a rather safe group of kids, whom I spent my weekend nights with, watching horror movies and listening to gossip.
I made out with a few girls. I delivered newspapers. I still got panic attacks once every few weeks and wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

Weekend days were reserved for going down to a local sports card shop, where for the nine or so hours the store was open, I talked sports with a bizarre cast of townies that had nothing better to do with their lives than, well, sit in a sportscard shop. There was a kid a few years older than me that worked there, who treated me as if I was the annoying little brother he never had. Just like an older brother, one second he would be giving me a rash of shit, while the next few hours were spent killing time, spewing out weekly statistics or theorizing what legendary team was better than the other. It never seemed to get old.
The owner, a local businessman that owned a sketchy chinese food restaurant, would make rare visits. Always scented with a tinge of alcohol, John would swagger into the shop, open a few packs of Hustler cards to look at some naked women without his wife knowing, eject a few inhuman belches, mutter the words "hurt me" as he rubbed his stomach and then say goodbye for another week or two.
David, the. shop "manager" would come in, sit at a back table while smoking cigarettes and harass any potential customer. He was the definition of the word "haggler", always coming in with some unnecessary items that he had scored at a flea market or garage sale for a dollar or two. He would give lengthy lectures on any and all subjects brought up and always seemed to fashion himself as a somewhat small town mystical philosopher. There was always a look on his face after he talked as if to ask, "Did I just blow your mind or what?"
Without a doubt, the most interesting specimen of the shop days was Stretch, a seven foot tall manboy that lived with his mother. Day after day he would come in wearing the same Chicago White Sox jersey with smudged ink on his face from delivering newspapers from his car. He had this bizarre high pitched voice that, when excited, sounded like dying airhorn. Naturally, I looked forward to this. He was, quite literally, the clumsiest individual I have ever been in contact with. His lanky frame seemed to never have a day pass without knocking over something in the shop, or, just knocking himself over.
There were a few other stragglers that found their way in and out of the store through those years, but we were the diehards, the ones who took the sour and dismal weekend offerings and ground them into sweet lemonade. I'd find a way to make it to that place in the dead of January blizzards with twelve feet of snow falling with another twelve on the way. So did the rest of them. On those days, I knew it wasn't that we all had nothing else to do, it was that this was exactly what we wanted to do. There was a comfort in that fucked up sports enthusiast family we had gathered.
Summer vacations, that place became my daily sanctuary. I would alternate between playing pick up games of basketball and sitting my weighty ass down in the air-conditioned shop. I know my parents would have been much happier if I had spent my free time with schoolmates, and, in my defense, there were a few. Unfortunately for my parents, I'd spend time with those schoolmates at the shop, them usually getting bored after a few hours while I was just warming up.
It went on like this for years, well into high school. I loved that goddamn place and all the fuckups that made it what it was. When I think of early teenage years, I don't think of many instances involving school. I think of that shop. I visualize Stretch tripping over a barbell and falling out the back door, setting off the alarm. I think of David, cigarette in hand, opening a pack of cards and getting something valueable, causing him to dance some mutant jig that shakes his beer gut from side to side, up and down. I like it better this way. I don't ever have to worry about where any classmates ended up, because I never made friends with them in the first place.
I don't know what happened to them. My mother would run into one of the guys every once in a while and would let me know, though that hasn't happened for a long time. It's quite fitting though, seeing as throughout my many, many moves since I left home, I don't have one baseball or basketball card to my name. My bedroom back then was filled with stacked white boxes of thousands of thousands of sets, divided into categories by players, teams, years, etc. I think collecting cards had done wonders for my OCD, keeping me occupied with something that, at the time, I could focus all my attention on. (and when I say "all my attention", I meant "all my attention". Homework had established itself as a nemisis..).
I do find myself walking in and out of card shops out here in Seattle, half hoping to overhear a conversation that peaks my interest and give me a reason to include myself. You hear people talking about good old days, or wanting to be able to go back in time to enjoy a school year again. I'd like to go back and spend a few more of those whitewashed winter days at the shop, watching snow fall out onto a modestly busy, small town Dover Main Street, watch the cars hurry down the slight hill all frantic with places the drivers need to be, while I'm exactly where I want to be. I can barely recall any of the stupid crap we talked about, all I know is that I had a great time doing it, being able to block out the thoughts of another day sitting at a desk, being told to do things I didn't want to do.