I've been asked to tell a story about an event I'm thankful for, that's changed my life in a positive way. Frankly, I had a hard time thinking of any one thing. I mean, I had a couple brushes with death, but those are both fairly uninteresting. Each has a happy ending and besides ensuring I probably won't be surprised when the Grim Reaper decides to see if the third time's the charm, they really don't involve anything except my being genuinely unfortunate and things managing not to be any worse. I got by, and really, what kind of moral is that? I don't know. I figure the most influential event in my life wasn't an event at all, but rather a year. A terrible year, in retrospect, but it felt like an improvement at the time.

This is a story about my sophomore year. Yes, that's right. Two years ago, 2002-2003. It's a tale of love, violence, and self-improvement, each for no sound reason and to no sound end, and it would be a success story if it actually ended in any success. 

So when I was in the seventh grade, I punched a guy.

Real hard. In the face. It felt all right, and in retrospect he really did deserve it. Generally my victims did, and that meant I only physically attacked maybe one or two people a year. Real jerks. Bullies, actually. I wasn't much more violent as a twelve-year-old boy than I am as a seventeen-year-old man, all things considered, it's just that I got backed into a lot more corners.

This is because at the age of twelve, I had a lot less going for me as a human being. Yeah, I was pretty smart, but not what you'd call charismatic. As should be reasonably obvious, I'm fat. I've been fat since, oh, let's say 1994. Bad experience with relatives lead to an eating disorder -- you know the story. I've gotten over it, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not medically morbidly obese any more, but at twelve I sure was. I think I would have rolled given proper physical motivation. Not that that's a problem -- certainly, I'd say weight is utterly meaningless among people worth knowing.

Sadly, most of my contemporaries... weren't worth knowing. So I got some flak for that, certainly. There was the fact that I was rather introverted, and really still am. And I spent most of the time surrounded by people who were less than understanding about either that or the weight. I've been compared to Michael Moore, and really, I find that comparison to be inaccurate. Now, anyway. Back then, I was much more vocal, much more angry, and much more overly passionate about everything. I managed to believe that I was a sociopath -- specifically, someone who is incapable of feeling any emotion. In fact, I went through one of those phases when you believe all emotion is a construct.

I suppose, in retrospect, you could say that I had it coming too. You don't walk around middle school being a big, fat, nerdy, psychologically disturbed, friendless communist. It just isn't done. So I got what was coming to me, and so did the guy who gave it out.

Pow. Right in the face. As I said earlier, it felt all right.

One time in what I believe was the same year, I had a teacher return a mechanical pencil which someone else had stolen from me. So said someone and a group of his friends got me up against a wall and beat the hell out of me. As I apparently had a lot more hell in me than they predicted, I managed to come back the next day. When they tried to rectify this, I punched one of them.

As a result, I was suspended for half a week and then placed in a group in which, it was decided, I belonged.

A group of people who burned things.

Of course, I developed plenty of antisocial habits in the years between then and my sophomore year. I gradually took to wearing scrubs, both pants and shirts, and eventually that became all I'd wear. I do believe I attended one hundred and ten days of freshman year; I attended school in what amounted to my pajamas, made a vigorous effort to get into slow classes, and decided not to bathe regularly. I believe by the beginning of sophomore year, I was down to a shower every four days. What changed the next year? Well, hell if I know. Could have been quite a few things, but so far I'm blaming it on love.

Yes, that's right. L-O-V-E. Not the sort of love between a child and a parent, or a man and God, or even really a man and a woman (or, on occasion, a man and a man); it's the special kind of love you find only between one teenager and another. It's one-way, petty, easily forgotten, and mostly sexual. What makes it different from simple, garden-variety lust? So far as I can tell, inexperience.

It was a girl in my chem class. Some of you may know her, so I'm not going to risk dropping a name. We sat together, talked a bit, and occasionally collaborated on major projects. She was attached, so I didn't really bother finding out if she was interested. Common theme, that. I met her mother a couple of times; she's reasonably friendly and quite the cook, but also she wanted to nuke the Arabs, so it was sort of a trade-off. The mother, not the girl. I don't know how well the girl cooks or if she wants to nuke the Arabs.

I still meet the girl from time to time, and we are cordial. But I got over her, and moved to another one pretty fast. If I were keeping score of these things, it'd be 'attached, attached, gay, drug addict, attached, no idea'. You're probably asking where the change is here.

Well, I started trying to motivate myself to give a damn, and I think to some extent I've succeeded. I tend to wake up early enough to get to school in something resembling a timely fashion, I don't feign sickness as often as I was once wont to, I only dress half in scrubs, and I often take five showers per business week. I'm a lot less angry and a lot more thoughtful, and people are generally able to recognize and appreciate my genius without it being beaten into them. I'm not a lot less violent, but I've calmed down on the revenge, which probably only means I've needed to avenge less. No success on the love front, but hey, if there were any, this story wouldn't be half as interesting. 

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. 'Fall in unrequited love?' Nah, not a good moral at all. But at least it's better than any other story I could truthfully retell, which, if it were any good and interesting at all, would probably have a moral of 'don't die of anaphylactic shock'. That doesn't mean I'm encouraging death by anaphylactic shock, just that avoiding it is a pretty pedestrian thing to be thankful about.

Generally people tell you that you'll look back on whatever it is that's bugging you and laugh, and generally they're subtly mocking you and probably laughing at you behind your back, but in this case I can look back on it and laugh. And I suppose if I needed something to be thankful about, that'd be it.