I was told not so recently that one of the things that is missing on my site is an "About Page". As in, "About Owen".
A word of caution...
There is stuff here you don't want to know.
You know who you are.
Stop reading now.
I was looking through some sites today - old web acquaintences - like Liam's and some of his friends, and thought that maybe I should write something up. This article would by nature be evolutionary, since it's about me and I change all the time. So where to start? You are probably going to get more than you bargained for.
I'm a Pennsylvania guy. I was born here. In fact, I haven't done much moving from this 10-mile radius unless you count a few weeks of sporadic vacation and a three-year jaunt to college that landed me my girl.
Many things have influenced me when growing up, so I'll only waste time on some of the more influential points. In kindergarten (and you're thinking, "Yeah right, as if this is influential," but trust me and read on) I was part of the in-crowd, or what would eventually become the in-crowd.
At my 5th birthday party, my mom had invited my little friends over to celebrate. I was fairly ungracious to one of my best friends at the time, Chris Mattioni, when he gave me a present that I thought was too babyish for me. I didn't realize what I was doing. I mean, I was just 5. But that brief moment screwed me up for the rest of my life, since I had just tolled the death knell of my membership in the high society.
Through the rest of school, I was never in the company of any really popular kids. There was a brief period in the first grade where I was teased for my affair with Virginia W., who was well known for having bowel control issues during class. Otherwise, I was an average student (although there was the suggestion that I be held back remedially in thrid grade) in elementary school up until 4th grade.
Mr. Wood was my homeroom teacher. I'm not sure what happened that year. Somebody recognized something in me that they hadn't bothered to before. I often think that I've always been a kind of experiment for them, to see if they could take a regular kid and turn him into some kind of genius by just telling him it is so. I got moved around in my math classes so that I was learning more stuff faster. Psychological testing "proved" that I was gifted, and I was to start going regularly to DEEP classes.
That year in fourth grade was a significant turning point for me. I learned to use the computer that year. Mr. Wood ran an after school computer club in our classroom that I loved. Since I wasn't really playing with the other kids, I had a lot of time to learn. The next year, in fifth grade, I came back to the club, but after spending my whole summer messing with the computer, there wasn't anything left that Mr. Wood could teach me.
I think fourth grade was also the year that my grandfather, "Gramps", died in a car accident. That seems really young. I was told that some drunk driver hit him when pulling out of the bypass onto 322 near West Chester. I didn't go to the funeral, which affects me in strange ways to this day in regard to death. There was a point later when the drunk driver was released from prison that I remember feeling very angry.
I don't know what caused the decline in my grades in school after fourth grade. I just didn't care. I didn't want to do homework. I had met some new friends in DEEP, like Derek Holt, and in sixth grade we had school together full time. I finally had some friends.
Somewhere around fourth grade I also finished my Sunday school career by being confirmed in the Catholic faith. Our ceremony was presided over by John Cardinal Kroll, who in his retirement year visited many of the local churches to perform this ceremony. I was randomly chosen out of my Sunday school class along with a girl from the Catholic school to present him with gifts from our church.
In the video my dad took of the event (which includes a stirring drama enacted by my brother and myself about penguins) it shows me presenting the gift and wandering off with a giddy, broad smile, while this now anonymous girl was weeping hysterically. To this day I don't get all worked up about this religious stuff, although I frequently kid that I've accidentally spent my clout with God on being selected for this task, and my likelihood of winning the lottery now is nil.
There was baseball during that time, too. I played on pee-wee teams for a few years. Even when I was playing ball, I only remembered a couple of the other kids' names. I was not a social guy. Having actual friends was a big deal.
Junior High... Interesting memories there. I recall that on the first few days of school my mom had me wear these strange clothes. Blue dress pants, if I remember correctly. We had an interesting discussion about how nobody wore clothes like that to school. Very weird.
My cousin, Charlotte, was a surprise to see in my homeroom class. She was ahead of me by one grade, but apparently failed a year and was held back into my class. She was, unsurprisingly, not at school too often.
I did some activities in junior high. I was on the student council. In junior high, this was more of a "fine, I'll do it" activity than something taken as having any respect. As part of my civic duty, I got to program the LED sign in our cafeteria, which had a slot-machine simulator that got my growing pool of friends into some gambling trouble. They'd bet nickles on which fruits would appear on the screen when it stopped. I was eventually limited to just listing the announcements. But those afternoons at the lunch table were where I finally developed my sense of humor, which had been a great impediment to making friends prior to that.
By junior high I was into all of the bad computer stuff. I pirated software rampantly. In fact, if you asked me at the time where one might purchase a particular piece of software, I couldn't tell you, but I could probably give it to you. I was also online on many BBSes. I had membership on a couple of l337 boards. I even met a few of those folks
Wrestling was my sport in junior high. My buddy, Allen Lloyd, and I joined the team. I was surprised to see him there, and when he has mentioned it more recently I have always been surprised to find memory of him there. Anyway, I made varsity for our first match in the 75lb division (yeah, I was tiny - no surprise there), lost to the state champion at Owen J. Roberts school, then hurt my elbow wrestling someone at practice who was two weight classes higher than me. I sat on the sidelines for a few weeks, then wrestled off against this dude who kept choking me. I lost the match, but only because the coach (who was later arrested for molesting a student) couldn't see what all of the other kids saw plainly. I spent the rest of the season on JV.
Ninth grade marked my first "girlfriend". I'm not sure how I came to be involved with the girl across the street. Tracy and I were "an item", if one was to listen to our neighbors talk. We didn't go anywhere. There were no dates. There was some kissing and groping. Eventually, we (I?) just got bored of things between us. I was rotten at the end and just stopped talking to her. I went on to have interest in several girls who were out of my league, and Tracy went on (in the rumors I heard) to have sex with this guy I couldn't stand. I've seen her recently (but not spoken to her) at her mom's with a little girl who looks to be about 4 or 5.
High school was only a little different from junior high. Grades still on the decline. I enjoyed math and the one computer class I took. Can you believe I got a C in my first quarter? This is just evidence of my inability to follow instructions. Or maybe my belief that my way is always the better way. Hmm.
As a sophomore I went to the gym for wrestling tryouts, but I didn't actually try out. I got nervous and didn't get dressed. This is the first time I remember behaving like this, and my life has been riddled with these almost-did-it events ever since.
I signed up for the school paper in 11th grade, and was appointed editor of the paper in 12th. Having an office in the school in which to spend study halls with a computer was a good thing.
