"No, Dad, what?" Of course I did know what my
problem was, he told me often enough. "Your problem is you never finish anything. You quit everything you start; bowling, trumpet, Little League, wrestling, Boy Scouts...you never stick with anything." For some reason quitting the bowling league really stuck in his craw, although I can barely remember being in a league, let alone my reasons for quitting it. Maybe he bought me a bowling ball or something. Now, in my defense, most of this stuff I really didn't want to do anyway. My parents, particularly my mother, were really into the idea of the well rounded child - you know- music, athletics, academics -m a strong mind in a healthy body. All I really wanted to do in my spare time was sit around reading science fiction and eating
Honeycomb cereal. There were problems with all of my chosen-for-me "activities"; Boy Scouts - no Honeycomb cereal or flush toilets at camp; Little League - I was a pretty good ball player but I got scared of taking one to the cranium so that was out; Wrestling - I could easily beat anyone in the school who was in my weight class (all two of them) but incipient OCD and wrestling snotty, sweaty boys was a bad combination. For some reason I decided to join the marching band, I guess I felt lonely for the company of other nerds. Unfortunately, not playing for 2 years didn't do much to improve my embouchure, I still sucked. So I ended up 4th trumpet, last chair. Embarrassing. Then a treble clef baritone spot opened up and since I was the only one who signed up, I ended up 1st treble clef baritone, 1st chair, bitches. Best of all the bass clef baritone could really play so I'd just march along beside him faking it. We were awesome. My specialty was
Windy. She had stormy eyes.
Baa pa pa paaa. But I got tired of that, too.
So I went on to quit the Church, college, a marriage, a dozen jobs, drugs and alcohol. Dad was right. I just can't stick with anything. I guess I'm just not a joiner.
