My father was a priest and was constantly searching for his own church and his own way so we moved around a lot. I started out 1st and 2nd level Primary, then 1st and 2nd grade at a Christian Episcopal prep school in Oklahoma City, OK.
I know you're really too young to make judgements like this, but I was very popular as a kid at that school. Endless friends, crushes on girls maybe a little too early for that (though I never did have a "girlfriend" back then.)
Moving from Oklahoma City---
----short but necessary interruption: people are so freaking dumb and ignorant, OKc has one of the highest populations in the country, it's in the top twenty... now think about this, there are approximately 19,405 cities in the U.S. and OKc is in the top 20. So pull your head out of your ass, we don't have teepees. . . I could go on...) ----
---so we pulled out of the big city and moved to the city of my birth, second largest in the state, Tulsa Oklahoma. It was culture shock going to a public school with hundreds of kids where you could quickly be swallowed up by anonymity. It was the opposite at that small prep school. Everyone knew everyone. I found out very quickly that you couldn't just walk in and become the popular kid. I didn't know how to adapt, I'd never had to do it before. People began to dismiss me as "weird," a description I would carry for the rest of my life.
On that first move I was very rapidly tossed down the rungs of the social ladder until I was at the very bottom, in the dirt, and had almost no friends except a few very cool ones who lived in my neighborhood.
(as an aside: my school was directly, like a few steps, across the street from my house. It was exceedingly strange. But one benefit I had was that I just had to cross the dead end road to have access to the playground, the cent of which was one of those big wooden forts with sand at the base called a "Big Toy." I had the coolest time playing Star Wars figures there with the entire place to myself. A had recently been gifted a action figure sized Millennium Falcon which made it all the more cool [and a little prescient considering the "final" film of the actual factual "trilogy" began on Luke's home world, the dessert Tatooine (reminder, the big toy was on a big sand box.)]
Any way, back to my shit show life (great name for a tv show) I learned pretty quickly, through changing schools about every few years, that people hated the class brain, and the teachers pet. So, I became the class clown, the comedian, embraced the "weirdo" way. In doing impersonations and acting out movie (or cartoon for the best laughs) scenes.
This got me a free pass from the bullies. They could yell at one kid down the hall, "meet me after school on the playground, I'm gonna kick your ass." And then turn around to me, "oh, Philip, do that British accent."
So, my advanced IQ and my natural ability to do well in all subjects became buried. I did poorly at schoolwork on purpose. A feat easily done by just not studying for tests, and not doing homework. And who would ever think the class clown was a genius? And this became so ingrained in my personality I couldn't shake it, even at college. I skated through classes (with the great exception for Literature and Art), faking my way along.
I was shocked and really really pissed off that we had to take "electives" (I didn't elect these wastes of time!) which were basically reruns of high school. I went there to learn how to be a writer, not be a "Renaissance" man who could master Biology and Physics and Sociology along the way. Fuck all that!
It wasn't until my four semesters at the Masters level in the Creative Studies Department of the Liberal Arts college that I finally was doing what I wanted to be doing in every single class after 5 years of fucking about as an undergrad (oh, failed to mention, I ended up with a B.A. in English Literature and Criticism, and a stupidly "undeclared" minor in Art and Design (the head of the Graphic Design "wing" asked me to switch from English Lit to Graphic Design. He told me I had the right kind of mind for it, as well as the artistic chops. But I was set on becoming a writer. I wished I could be both.
So, back to Masters school: this was what I had imagined college was. It was unfortunate, and quite expensive, to fart around as an undergrad drowning in classes I despised. Here I was right were I belonged, class after class of perfecting my writing skills.
(They'll tell you, and should tell you, in both Liberal Arts and in the Art Program, that you can't have "talent" taught to you, no matter how many classes you attend or how hard you try. Talent for a subject (or subjects) is something you're born with. You go to school to "perfect" your talent, to "sharpen" it. But by no means can anyone "teach you a talent."
Apparently the Art School had waded out into some deep waters by allowing people who didn't have any of these talents they so wanted to have, graduate with a degree. Graduates were coming back to the school to complain that they were unable to find any work based on their submissions and portfolio. They were being told, quite frankly by many prospects, that they just didn't have the raw talent necessary for the job. Not even an Art teacher at an Elementary school! You actually do have to be an artist to land that job... at most schools (sometimes they randomly shuffle someone like one of the sports coaches to fall in and teach out of a text book. Thankfully I always had wonderful art teachers who were actual artists and encouraged me on my own artistic path.)
So, starting fairly early into my weird journey through the Art School I was running in to classmates who had been counseled to leave the Art School ("you're just not working out as an Artist, and we can't give you a degree just because you attend all the classes. We believe its in your best interests to feel around and find something else that you have a talent for.")
(shh... so we don't get sued by people we handed a degree but without the ability to land a job or otherwise use said degree.)
I counted myself lucky in both "schools" that Liberal Arts wanted me to remain in Liberal Arts, and that Art and Design wanted me to leave Liberal Arts for Art and Design (specifically Graphic Design.) It was a nice ego boost, but also, for a time, very very confusing.
Flash forward to Grad School: things, everything, went into the shitter by the end of the 90's and I never recovered.
When I returned to Oklahoma City from living with my parents in little (but cool as hell) Muskogee Oklahaoma (birthplace of my father, and location of his last and favorite church, overwhich he was the Priest, Grace Episcopal Church. I've lost my self again, oh, I went back to Oklahoma City to finish out my Masters... ... and fuck all, they refused to give me anymore student loans. I only needed ONE more semester for my Masters in Creative Studies. But even after an appeal with notes from teachers I was told no. There was no way for me to pay for it myself. After going straight from Highschool in to College as an Undergrad and then into Grad school I had never actually had a "real" job, i.e. one that you could live on. Much less make enough money to also pay for Grad school!
After moving to Muskogee, Oklahoma, then back to Oklahoma City, then back to Muskogee again, I finally moved down to Austin, Texas on my way to L.A. (to be a professional writer, of course.)
I never made it to LA, but the unofficial town slogan of Austin is "Keep It Weird" so I figured it was a sign from the gods that this would be my knew home (and perhaps final home, at the rate I'm going).
I finally found out why I was so eccentric, weird, and sometimes had brief, and not so brief, psychotic episodes growing up, when I was eventually diagnosed with "Bipolar 1" AND "Extreme Panic Attacks" (which often had a crippling "Agoraphobia" just to add some spice to the panic) and all the medication I take (six kinds) sucked all my creative energy dry: several unfinished screenplays, a novel only just over half finished, art work abandoned, and the biggest casualty for me, my music has remained untouched for about 15 years now.
Oh, growing up, I did have great parent's who truly loved me, showed it, and told me so. Typical older siblings who only mildly, as per usual "bullied" the baby of the household, but always came together as, not too too close, but descent friends. I developed my own group of friends in middle and high school when we'd settled back in OKC even though I changed schools "four" friggin times by the time I graduated high school in 1990. We were all the outcasts at school which brought us closer together than the constant power struggle among the popular kids.
But flash forward to 53 years old and I've become imprisoned by my own mind and the meds it requires to keep me sane (you know, that thing necessary to hold a job, pay rent and bills and food and clothes and housewares) I've worked at a "big box" store for nearly 25 years, stoned out of my gourd every day on 6 different medications. No friends, no girlfriends, it's all just blech! One big Shit Show. And now really really stuck in a hole in terms of finances.
Father died of Alzheimer's and now my mother is batshit crazy from Dementia (she's 81). Oldest brother died of alcohol poisoning after a life of severe drug and alcohol abuse.
I have my older sister and brother still around, but they're 9 hours north in Oklahoma City with complicate lives of their own (my sister basically takes care of my mother. I don't know how she does it but she's a freaking SAINT!)
I am woe. Woe is me?
"I feel-ah so break up, I wanna go home." --Dr. Emilio Lizardo from "Buckaroo Banzai" (a movie full of weirdos like me! hehe.)
After the end credits bonus scene:
I've always been an abnormally fixated movie buff. One thing I tried to do for a long time was find a character in a movie who was the most like myself in real life. It was to be a kind of Intro To Me and my Behavior class for a weirdo class clown geniuses who have a talent for Art AND Literature.
Oh there were scores of characters I wished were me. Some of whom came pretty close (Luke Skywalker. I know thousands of people "want desperately" to be like Luke Skywalker, but study his personality, his weaknesses, his talents, that's pretty close to me. And when all is said and done, actually not someone you'd really actually want to be. He was an inexperienced farm boy who suddenly had to become this Messiah who would destroy the Empire and set the galaxy back on the "good side of the force." [and restore the great Temple? Oh, no, that's the Jewish Messiah.] See also: Paul Atreides for an almost "specific" allegory to the Jewish Messiah.)
Much later on, in a galaxy far far fucking far away, Harry Potter and I shared some very similar circumstances. I was the school Chaplain's son, aka Father Berry's son. And I constantly heard, "oh, you're Father Berry's son. We expect great things from you." And (this is when I came back to the prep school after 5 years away) I was also bullied like Potter was. If you've seen the first Harry Potter then you know exactly what I mean.
But I finally found my doppelganger in the title character Martin in the somewhat obscure George A. Romero "unconventional" Vampire pic, "Martin." I was like, holy shit, that's me on the screen. Fat lot of good it did me though. I mean, watch the end of the movie to get some idea of how his quiet isolated self ended up.
(And, as with "Bladerunner," there's a kind of argument as to whether Martin really actually was a vampire, or was he just mentally ill. Romero thinks mentally ill. --I say "fuck that shit. Pabst Blue Ribbon." Okay, that was from "Blue Velvet"-- I believe Martin really was a vampire. I think the black an white flashback scenes of Martin, looking exactly as young now at 84 as he did then at 16, and the fact that his cousin, Tata Cuda, appears as an equally young man in the flashbacks, but, unlike Martin, he's now a very old grey haired man.
Fuck Romero (ha! not really,) the man has had, not as much as, but and on a smaller scale, a similar amount of an influence on the genre of horror cinema (and it's subtle allegory, lost on most casual viewers) where was I? Oh, Romero has had as much influence on the smaller scale horror genre as George Lucas with large scale space operas and how to make a good movie overall. (don't hang me over that statement. Its true to a reasonable degree.)
I'll end today's sermon with a quote from Jeffery Goines, played by Brad Pitt, in the criminally underrated "12 Monkeys:"
"Fuck the bozos!"
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