The 1980s: if ever there was a decade about which I did not care to reminisce, that would be the one. The others would be the 1990s, the 1970s, and all of the other decades. I do not remember much of anything these days, and for that I blame this godforsaken weather. The rainy season, this interminable gray Claremont downpour, is taking a terrible toll on our collective mental health. By "our" I of course mean "my," and by "collective" I of course mean "shut up." I am also a little tense.

How tense, you ask, am I? Bring me a lump of coal, and I will crush it to diamond in my fist. I can also tear telephone books in half and bend lampposts over my knee. If you do not believe me, I suggest that you keep it to yourself, because I have recently invested in a pair of scissors, and I am not afraid to wave them around in a threatening manner. I have also been writing a lot more poems about blood. Only pronounced like this: "bloooooood!"

What I am saying is, you can publish your own damn tributes to Kajagoogoo and the Garbage Pail Kids. It has recently come to my attention that I am failing all of my classes, plus some classes that I do not think I am actually enrolled in, like "Introduction to Words That Rhyme with ‘Blood,’" plus I have spent all of my flex dollars on soup, plus if I do not find some quarters for the washing machine pronto I will be forced to start making my own clothing out of napkins and masking tape. If I had known, back in the 1980s, that I would grow up to be so lazy and so consistently broke, I would have spent more money on baseball cards manufactured before my birth and less money on Paul McCartney cassingles. As matters stand I am willing to trade a 1978 Topps Dave Winfield for a clean pair of pants. I would throw in the cassingles for free, but I think I melted them. My childhood was full of embarrassing purchases.

Here is another embarrassing fact about my childhood: When I was eight years old I tried to hatch an egg from the refrigerator. My mother would not let me have a dog. But wait: that is not even the stupid part. The stupidest part was, even if hatching an unfertilized egg from Food Lion were not biologically impossible, I still would have failed, because my approach to incubation consisted of wrapping the egg in a bandanna and leaving it in a box of Legos all week.

Now that I think about it, you can keep your pants to yourself, because my amazing brain and I have hit upon a solution to all of our problems: I am running away from school. You are welcome to come along. You will, however, have to supply the following items:

– a suitcase full of trail mix.

– actually, that’s about it.

We will have a grand time, you and I, tramping around the Inland Empire. Camping out in Wal-Mart! Riding the bus all day long, every day of the week, until we run out of dimes! Selling our own hair! Then, when we get tired of life on the road, we can go to Hollywood and become famous movie stars. I have not worked out the details yet, but I am pretty sure that if I keep hitting myself over the head with this empty whiskey bottle, a plan will eventually reveal itself. Or I will finally finish my blood poems. Does "good" rhyme with "blood?" What about "delicious?" No? Perhaps an exhaustive six-week tour of this case of bourbon will clear my head. Good evening! Good night!