1992

A funny thing happened on my way to the grave. I got distracted for five years or so. More to the point, I distracted myself from what I knew of school and family, discarded ideas piled up on the kitchen table, a reality worn stale, my own ambition, purpose and a life without purpose. It all started with a doodle in algebra class.

"What's the 'U-Zone'," Joey asked.

"It's just…something," I replied, "A logo, I guess."

"Huh. Cool. What are you planning to do with it?"

"Uh, I dunno." Thinking about where most of this stuff ends up, I answered, "Probably just toss it on top of my table at home with my other stacks of crap."

"What?! You haven't seen the condition of my room lately, I assume," Joey continued. "Besides, that's too bizarre to throw away."

He was right – about the "bizarre" part at least. I didn't toss it. Instead I wondered what to do with the thing until I got home. Even then, it sat for days on my drawing table until I dusted it off and filled the page up and down and across to the margins with other images of miscellany. In the last, empty white space I printed "Volume I, Issue #001." Suddenly, that simple pen-and-ink doodle had become a zine.

Over the next few weeks, I cranked out filler material: fake letters to the editor, silly pointless games and stupid articles about nothing. There were nights I would stay up at Kinko's until the wee hours of the morning making copies and putting on finishing touches like nice paper. The end result was creative and crude, but I couldn't help being proud of it. I gave Joey one of my only ten copies, and I sold the rest for a measly fifty cents within the week. This project was still in the early stages, but I was soon surprised by what else I had up my sleeve.

"Chrissy and I decided we're from another planet."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah," Molly replied rather matter-of-factly, "Xandar."

"I wonder if I am too."

"Oh, you are," she stated, "but you're not from Xandar. We don’t have men on Xandar. It's an all female planet."

"Then I guess I'm from my own planet."

"What’s your planet?" Chrissy interjected.

I was at a loss. I didn’t even know what time it was, much less the name of my newly-realized home planet. "Uh, 'This Here Planet…I Declare.'"

"Nice name," shot Chrissy.

"Yeah, thanks. I knew you'd like it."

It went on like this for a few more hours. This was a typical phone conversation for me though – staying up all hours of the morning, sometimes on three-way, often on a school night – we'd get those creative juices flowing just from our endless conversations. Most of the time, it was with Molly or Joey. Occasionally, Chrissy or one of Molly's other friends would join us. This was pretty much the extension of my social life outside of school.

We kept going, prompted by Molly and Chrissy's requests for more details. "So do you have women on This Here Planet, I Declare?"

"Yeah. They came from Xandar," was my quick retort.

The dialogue eventually got tired, and all three of us hanged up for the night. The ideas we discussed, however, stayed with me. "Xandar" and "This Here Planet, I Declare" – I let them stew in my mind like ripe vegetables in a boiling pot. They stewed until they became something of substance, just like the U-Zone. They stewed until they became even more in my head, constructs I was just starting to wrap my mind around.

That same year, I met Kary. My friendship with her was a weird one. I didn't go to school with her, but we managed to meet each other from time to time to talk over coffee at Barnes and Noble, hang out at local parks or see a movie and stuff like that. It was almost like we were a couple, but we weren't. We were more like opposite sides of the same coin -- always together, but rarely facing each other. My parents never really had an opportunity to meet her, but neither did my other friends. Sometimes, your social circles just develop that way: one life divided into many different pieces.

Deep, existential axioms resonate with the adolescent mind. Philosophy to a teenager is like a drug, and Kary was my dealer of choice. Her wisdom kept drawing me to her. She had uncanny ability to rattle off stuff that had a profound lingering impact on me. She once told me, "Don't doubt who you are or what you can become. Don't question your abilities. You are who you want to be. The only thing that can surprise you is what you believe." I could be paraphrasing, but I remembered the gist of what she was saying, and it was all the motivation I needed during that time in my life, a time I felt idle and lost. I was fifteen going on sixteen, right in the midst of those awkward teenage years. At that age, I needed to hear stuff like that, and I sure couldn’t get it from my parents or teachers, but I got it from her.

I stayed up late many a night talking to Kary too. In retrospect, I wonder if I had remained closer to her than I did with people like Molly and Joey, if things would be different. She definitely exerted an influence on me, even if at times it seemed as if it was at the expense of my own mind. Kary was an ideal person, a prototype in many ways. She was laid-back, easygoing and non-judgmental. She was a lot of things I wasn't, yet as close as we were, I often felt like I really didn’t know her. Sometimes I could sense our inevitable fate harkening from down the road.

Over time, Kary and I grew apart. That happens in a lot of relationships. It happened with Molly, Joey and many others too. However, for a while in 1992, what I got from all of them helped define much of the next few years. It even influenced who I was long after that. These kinds of memories – the formative ones – are the ones that stick with you into adulthood, whether that adulthood is rooted in reality or somewhere on "This Here Planet, I Declare."