bill madlock's batting average

Nothing to see here. Just turn around. Keep going. See ya. Bye bye.

It’s telling. The words that someone else wrote here. The entire story of here is there, on the wall. Just waiting for the next person to read it, digest it, and make a decision about what they mean.

For me, they say yep. For the last guy, they may have said nope. It’s the beauty of words. Especially simple ones.

I once wrote a love poem. The girl I gave it to laughed at it. Said it was cute. I never wrote another poem for over a decade. It cut that deep. You could say it’s still bleeding. Things are funny that way. The ones that stick.

You think something when it happens is going to be something vital. Permanent. Then, a week later, you’ve forgotten all about it. Or she forgot about it and you didn’t. Or the dog shit on the exact piece of paper you may have written it on, then ate it just to spite you.

Then there are the throwaway moments. A television commercial. A rip in your jeans. An argument in a bar. Those things, they stick. You remember them for years. Decades. Forever. Whatever that is.

I’ve always had a problem remembering “important” things. The dates a girlfriend’s parents died. The favorite drink of the woman I want to share a life with. Unless I write them down. Then I can look at them. Study them like definitions in my world history class the junior year of high school. When the one-armed teacher would write terms on the chalkboard for the first 10 minutes of class. Then tell us to remember them, read a chapter and then watch some 1940s or 50s film strip about the past. War. Death. Famine. AIDS. Well, no AIDS. It was still new then. Rock Hudson was what AIDS was about, I guess.

But I could always tell you Bill Madlock’s batting average each year he won a batting title. They were .354, .339, .341 and .323. If you want me to sign any lyric from Poison’s first two albums, I’m your man.

I don’t want it to be that way. I try my best to learn a language that I’d already studied for over six years, but never mastered. Yet I could remember the name of any girl that I ever had a crush on from the time I was 9 years old.

It’s a curse. But a blessing. Those things, those random-ass stupid facts and scenes from the past. They fill up gaps in stories. They fill up gaps in conversations. Change a little bit here, a little bit there and it becomes something different to say. To write. Tell that to the girlfriend. Tell it to her when you forget something important. Then, it sucks. A lot.

I guess that’s a guilty conscious. No. I know it is. It hurts to think of some of the stupid things I’ve done. But, there ain’t shit I can do about them now. So, I write about them. I remember them. I try to learn from them. Do I ever? Guess it depends on who you ask.

My old journals and blogs and diaries and notepads were full of confessions. Full of drunken ramblings of a broken-hearted fool. Most of it was shit. Some of it wasn’t. Sometimes people stumbled upon them. Read what I had to say about them, about us, about the things I thought we shared or should have shared. Some shuddered. Some smiled. Some never came back. Some kept coming back. Some came, went, then came back years later. Very few ever asked me about it. That always perplexes me. But what can you do except keep on keepin’ on.

Just the other day. It seems someone from my past paid a visit. I wrote something about this person drunk one night a long, long time ago. The internet is funny. It’s been deleted, but it still exists. They found it, read it, and read some more. I have no idea what the reaction to it was. Although I may be able to hazard a guess. But that’s a futile effort. Why? Because only they know, and if they don’t want to tell, I ain’t going to find out anytime soon.
Damn. I’m uninspired, yet inspired to think.

I did just eat too much bad for me food. And two cans of ginger ale. That also may have something to do with it all.

Bare with me. It will get better.

A boy can dream…