Since that night, I've never been able to read a Shakespeare play the same way.

It was a good feeling to have finally found my niche in the halls of my school. Everyone from the JROTC department to the principal to the theatre geeks would come to me asking for help when filming or editing a project.

It was nice indeed to be needed.

One day my friend Jon came up to me asking for help with an extra credit project he was working on. His English teacher had assigned him the task of filming a scene out of “Macbeth.” I agreed to help him out not only because he was a friend, but also because I love the play and thought I could really do some interesting things with the scene. It also didn’t hurt that his teacher was also my teacher and she had agreed to give me some points as well.

“You don’t have to plan anything,” Jon told me. “We already have the idea all thought out. All we need is for you to operate the camera and edit the thing together.”

The group was set to film at Garza Park, a tiny playground located next to the local elementary school. I was told to meet at the merry go-round at dusk and to bring my camera.

That afternoon I packed all my equipment and hopped into my parent’s van, heading towards the park.

When I had gotten there, the first thing I noticed was a lack of actors. There was nobody at the park but tiny children playing to their heart’s content at the slides.

I sat down at a picnic table, fiddling with my camera and trying my best not to look like a pedophile cruising for prey.

The minutes whisked by and I grew more and more agitated at the lack of any thespians waiting to be filmed. I did not have a phone and could not call Jon so, instead, I continued to sit on the picnic table and watch the sun slowly set.

The day’s light was fading and it was becoming more and more obvious that filming was going to soon be impossible baring the usage of a powerful headlight.

As dusk finally settled in I noticed my friend walking my way. On his head sat a cardboard Burger King crown; a sheet was tied around his neck.

Jon sauntered over to where I was sitting and plopped down next to me.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said.

His parents had refused to drive him to the park so he had to walk. The rest of the group would be arriving soon. He may have said some more but to be quite honest, I wasn’t listening too hard. Instead, I was staring in shock at his excuse for a costume.

Now, the films I had done during high school were not known for their professional appearance, I’ll be the first to admit that – but wow, he was doing Shakespeare!

Couldn’t he have found something more slightly royal to wear then the trash perched on his head? Even Jughead Jones wore a more distinguished looking crown.

I dreaded to see the costumes the rest of his group would be wearing.

“We can’t film right now,” I told him. “There’s no light. The camera’s not going to pick up anything.”

“Don’t worry about that,” he responded. “We’re going to use fire.”

At that point, I took notice of the bag he had hauled over his shoulder. He reached inside and pulled out a stack of newspapers, a plastic gas canister and a Bic lighter.

I was already pissed off about having been kept waiting and seeing the unprofessional nature of my friend’s costume so you’ll have to excuse me if my spider-sense didn’t go off when Jon suggested we should light a scene with a miniature bonfire.

I merely shrugged and began setting up my equipment.

Soon enough, the rest of the team had arrived.

There was the creepy girl who sat in the library reading encyclopedias during lunch. She now wore a plastic trash bag as a cloak.

There was the asshole that used to date my friend and made fun of me during junior high. He had on his letterman jacket.

The other girl I didn’t recognize, but she was dressed in cutoff shorts and a tube top, clutching a baby doll and a bottle of ketchup.

Shakespeare in the Park, this was not.

While they set up their “props” and rehearsed their lines, Jon started the fire.

He placed the newspapers in a barbeque pit and poured some gasoline over the stack, lighting it with his Bic. The light the gas-fueled inferno radiated was certainly bright, but the smell was almost unbearable.

I no longer cared, though. I strapped my camera to its tripod and checked the battery.

Soon, the cast was crowded around the pit and ready to begin their scene.

Jon was supposed to play Macbeth, facing the three crones who would reveal his destiny to him through elaborate symbolism and visions.

What I filmed was a group of high school students butchering Shakespeare as they awkwardly read their lines off of a sheet of paper and occasionally held up a prop that would heavy-handedly signify a part of Macbeth’s dark future.

The light of the fire was fading rapidly as the gasoline burnt up. My camera’s LCD screen was showing me that the picture was quickly becoming grainy.

Jon called for a break as he and I assessed how to get the fire going again. As he hemmed and hawed about proper safety precautions, I grew agitated with the time that he was wasting; time that could have been spent watching TV.

I grabbed the gas can from his hands and splashed some of its contents onto the flames.

“Look! How hard was that? Instant fire,” I sarcastically quipped.

Wait … something’s not right. Why do my hands feel so … hot? I looked down to see that that some of the fiery gasoline had splashed back toward the canister that I was now holding. The chunk of plastic in my hands had now become a flaming chunk of plastic.

I dropped the canister onto the ground and shook my arms, desperately trying to relieve myself of what I was sure were fiery hands.

It was only once I confirmed that my immediate person was not engulfed in flames that I attempted to assess the situation.

The gas container was now sitting on the ground, the fire burning brightly and spreading to the notoriously dry Rio Grande Valley grass. The barbeque pit itself was an inferno. I could feel the heat emanating from the dual fires as they started to tickle my arm hairs.

I panicked and quickly scanned the surroundings for any other troubles that I would have to consider – mainly, police. I wasn’t positive but something told me that lighting a city park on fire was illegal.

While the park itself was empty, next door was a public library with a parking lot full of cars.

Okay, I’ll admit it.

I didn’t know what to do so I panicked and ran off.

I ran like a little girl and hid behind a car in the parking lot.

This fire was not my problem. This was not my project.

Let Macbeth and his crones take care of this.

As I sat crouching behind a car, attempting to catch my breath and trying my best to calm my beating heart, I noticed a lack of weight hanging around my neck. My camera! I had left my camera back at the picnic table. I had to go back and get it.

As I ran back towards the quickly growing flames, I saw Jon, still standing in front of the barbeque pit. He looked at me in surprise and asked me where I had gone.

I lied and told him I had gone to search for a water hose or something. While lying, I noticed Jon and his partners hadn’t made much progress in containing the fire.

The two girls had run off to hide in their cars, leaving me feeling slightly better about my actions.

The other guy was scrounging around in his truck looking for something to put the fire out with while Jon danced around the flames, his face growing more and more frightened by the moment.

As Jon hopped around, I spotted the sheet he had used as his cape that was now lying on the floor. I quickly picked it up and threw it upon the fire, hoping to smother it.

Instead of smothering it, the sheet only became additional fuel to an ever-growing fire.

Jon panicked at the site of his mother’s bed sheet going up in flames and I panicked at the sight of the fire consuming the sheet and continuing to spread.

The other guy, decidedly calm, ran up from his car wielding a McDonald’s Styrofoam cup. He doused the fire with day old coffee and jumped back when the drink ignited mid-air.

The fire had taken on a life of its own. We had to stop it before it took our lives.

We tried everything to put the fire out. I tired to smother a portion of it with my foot before my shoelace ignited. The other guy tried kicking dirt on it. Finally Jon saw the proverbial light bulb over his head and ran to the playground, grabbing a bunch of play pebbles from under the slide.

Throwing them on the fire, he showed us that they were our best weapon in our war against the fire.

All too eager to follow the lead of somebody else in this nightmare, I was soon working overtime to smother the fire with the pebbles.

We finished the barbeque pit posthaste before we moved on to the gasoline fire. The gas had been burned out so we no longer had to worry about containing it, merely dowsing it.

We were almost finished putting the fire out when a couple of kids sauntered over our way.

“Dude… where did that fire come from?” one of them asked.

I was not in the mood to explain the situation to two potential witnesses so I tried to shoo them away. If that did not work, I would probably need to quiet them permanently.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I just found it here. You should go away.”

As I weighed the likelihood of the playground pebbles effectively smothering the two kids, one of them took a joint out of his jacket and bent over the fire.

“Got a light?” he asked, laughing as he lit his cigarette.

I felt like kicking what was left of the fire into his face.

He stood up, puffing away.

As Jon and I watched the two kids saunter away, I told him that I would not be available for filming for the rest of the evening. Perhaps he would like to reschedule?

We eventually finished filming at a different park, many miles away from our arson adventure.

The next time I picked up the camera, though, I made sure that there was plenty of light in the sky. We would not be playing with fire again.

The end footage was crap, fire or no fire, but I managed to edit something together that got my friend a B in his class.

A week later, I went back to the park.

Nothing was left of the gas can or the sheet, but there was a sign reading, “Arson is a crime. Any reports leading to the arrest of offenders will lead to a substantial reward.”

Realizing that I, a criminal, was returning to the scene of my crime, I quickly turned around and walked away — keeping an eye out for two stoners who may have been able to identify me and already wondering how much it would take to bribe them.

The catalyst for a life-long friendship.

A few weeks later OJ and I were walking home from school when we spotted a black trash bag sitting in the dirt alongside the irrigation ditch. It was obvious that the bag was full of something because of the bulky shape it had taken. We kicked it and could feel the heft of something heavy inside. We didn’t dare open it in the fear that our fingerprints on the bag would incriminate us in some sort of crime yet unknown. Instead, we spent the rest of the walk home debating just what could have been inside. Was it drugs? Money? Dirty laundry?

During the next few days as we continued to walk home, the bag remained on the edge of the ditch. As we passed it day after day, our curiosity only grew. Eventually, on the third afternoon after we discovered the bag, OJ showed me a pocketknife he had brought to school with him with the direct purpose of slashing a hole in the bag on the way home.

We hovered over the heavy-duty sized trash bag and each gave one final guess about its contents. I was convinced we were on the verge of discovering a misplaced ransom — we would be rich on blood money. OJ, on the other hand, figured it was exactly what it looked like — a bag full of garbage that had blown from somebody’s trash can and rolled over to the ditch. Either way, our insatiable curiosity prevented us waiting any longer to find out what treasures were hidden in the bag. OJ pulled out his pocketknife, bent over and ripped a hole in the trash bag.

Instead of money, garbage or even clothes, inside the trash bag was the decaying corpse of a dog — bandanna wrapped around its neck. The horrible stench that escaped the bag as soon as OJ had cut a hole in it brought tears to my eyes and caused me to dry heave. Maggots and other assorted insects had made fast work of the fury fiend that had just weeks ago trapped us on the irrigation ditch.The dog was now a rotting, sickening shadow of its former terrifying self.

One look at OJ confirmed that he was just as freaked out by the sight a dead dog stuffed in a trash bag as I was. He dropped his pocketknife on the floor and began running full-sprint away from the ditch. I followed after him. Since my house was closer to the ditch then his was, I let him inside to wash his hands in the sink. We stood in the kitchen for half an hour, furiously struggling to sanitize our hands from the horror we had just witnessed.

Almost thirteen years after the incident, I can still vividly see the image of the dog stuffed in the trash bag; maggots crawling out from inside its mouth. For the rest of fifth grade and the summer following, OJ and I would bring up the incident the way survivors bonded over a shared catastrophe. I would pass him in the halls of school and with a grimace and a nod we shared the secret knowledge of man’s cruelty.

Eventually, this trash bag-sized bond gave way to the two of us beginning to hang out outside of school and away from the context of dead animal discussion. We met on the weekends to play video games or ride our bikes around the neighborhood. We built a clubhouse out of materials stolen from construction sites and shared frustration when we found the clubhouse bulldozed the next day by vengeful builders. We even went trick-or-treating together — I dressed up as Spider-Man’s arch-nemesis Venom and he dressed as a dog, bandanna wrapped around his neck.

Read more stories of my childhood

Queue Mr. Big’s “To Be With You.”

I am walking alongside the creek.

It’s not as much a creek as it is a depression in the dirt used to protect an irrigation pipe. Even still, it’s my creek.

As I walk, I fiddle with my CD player — thumping my fingers against the underside of the machine. The player has been on the verge of dying for almost an hour. Even though I have grown tired of the CD that I brought with me on my walk, I believe that the heavy silence that comes without music would be much worse.

The sun beats down and I wipe the sweat off my skin. I can feel a zit forming on my forehead and I continue to walk down the non-creek that is nevertheless a creek.

I listen to the CD for a few more minutes before my player finally, irrevocably dies. It had died five times before. I resurrected it each time by taking out the batteries and switching them around; flipping poles and playing god. Bringing my CD player back to life did not make the music any better.

This time, though, the batteries are completely depleted. I take the headphones off my head and hang them around my neck.

I walk with my eyes pointed at the ground, staring at my dust-covered boots, trying to remember when I first learned to tie my shoes. The memory is lost, though, buried underneath the memories of her.

Her: the unrequited love.

What a cliché.

I look down at my shoes and try to remember my childhood but all I can think about is her laughter. All I can picture is her face, smiling at me, teasing me with knowledge that I will never know. I remember all of these things yet I cannot remember the name of my kindergarten teacher. In the back and forefront of my brain, she lurks. She is everywhere. Her hair shimmers with the florescent lights of the grade school classroom.

“What are you thinking about,” she asks.

“I’m thinking about you,” I tell her.

“Oh” is her only reply.

With that she disappears.

I look over my shoulder and spot a jackrabbit that has emerged from the non-creek. A dog that had been sniffing at a nearby dumpster also spots the rabbit and begins the Chase.

Will the dog eat the rabbit when the Chase is over? Will the dog end the Chase just like that or will he let the rabbit escape so that he may dream about future Chases. What can there possibly be left after the Chase is over? Does the dog desire the rabbit or does he just want the Chase?

Am I in love with the Chase or am I in love with her?

What would happen if she says yes? Will I take her in my arms and look into her eyes and will the music swell and the credits roll. No. What will follow will be much more uncertain, much more frightening.

I will probably call her every night, sharing more and more of myself until she truly knows me. But then, once she knows me, how could she ever want me. Or worse; what if I get to know her and no longer want her? When it is just the two of us, no longer strangers to one another and no longer in love with each other, what then? Will the Chase have justified the end?

The dog looked as if it was smiling as it chased the rabbit. It was probably out of breath. I don’t smile much anymore. I claim I am deep in thought and merely forget to smile. The truth is, I don’t believe in smiling anymore. After the Chase I will smile. Right now I am out of breath and I can’t smile.

“What are you thinking about,” she asks.

“I’m thinking about the Chase,” I tell her.

“Oh” is her only reply.

With that she disappears.

I am alone and I am walking alongside the creek that is and isn’t a creek, desperately trying to revive my CD player and hoping to get to those last remnants of energy that I know must still live in the batteries. I was right — the silence is much, much worse.

As I fumble with the batteries, I feel a pang in my chest, a spasm of desire. In this Chase, I realize, I am not the dog. I am the rabbit and I am being pursued by the ghost of what could be.

I am tired of running and I will tell her how I feel.

I am walking alongside the creek that is not a creek and she asks me what I am thinking.

I tell her I love her.

“Oh” is her only reply.

She does not disappear.

I don’t know what happens now.

Read more stuff I wrote during high school

In which my dad takes a stance against man-children who cut lines.

It was Friday afternoon and I had just gotten done with my afternoon job organizing the supply closet in the JROTC building. I was sitting on the couch reading the weekend entertainment section of the local newspaper when I noticed a small blurb announcing a comic book convention.

I’ve been a fan of comic books since the days of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures. My first real experience with superhero comics, though, came when my father brought home an issue of Uncanny X-Men that he had bought for me at the airport during a business trip he took to Dallas.

Since that issue, I’ve had a strong interest in “funny books.” Going to a convention dedicated to comic books only naturally seemed like my kind of fun.

According to the news brief, the convention would have a dealer’s room with two comic book artists available for autographs and sketches. I looked at the artists’ names and didn’t recognizing either of them. This did not deter my excitement though. Even if the artists were not famous (to me), they might be someday (or even better — they may someday die a tragic death that would cause everything they touched in life to go up in value).

I decided I would get the artists’ signatures and would hoard them away — waiting for the day that their value would increase enough for me to cash in on a sizable profit.

Because my parents had not forked over the money for me to attend driving school yet, I needed a ride. I went to ask my mother, a supporter of the arts even if she didn’t necessarily appreciate some of the dorkier varieties it came in. I figured I could convince her to drop me off at the convention while she ran some errands.

When I told her about the event, though, the first thing out of her mouth was not the “sure” I expected. Instead, she gave me a half-distracted afterthought of a response: “Your father can take you.”

My father could very well not take me.

My dad, although a wonderful guy, is not the most understanding of “alternative lifestyles.” When we dropped off my oldest sister at school in Austin, my dad nearly had an aneurysm watching the freaks and geeks of The Drag prowl their beloved territory.

It wasn’t just junkies and hobos my dad had a problem with, though. I had long learned not to ask him to give me a ride to the comic book store as he couldn’t grasp the affection grown men could have for video games or collectable action figures. I was positive he would not be keen on taking me to a convention that celebrated the idea of adults playing with their toys. This could only end badly.

Nevertheless, Sunday found my father and I begrudgingly driving to the hotel that would house the convention. Neither one of us thought this particular father-son bounding time was a good idea but my mother insisted we attend together. My father and I remained silent during the trip, the two of us concentrating on the radio.

When we arrived at the hotel, we exited the car and walked towards the conference room.

A smug look appeared on my father’s face when he saw a couple of small children excitedly talking about Batman. While at first it seemed that my father’s claims that comic books were for kids seemed to have been validated, his smug expression soon turned to a frozen look of horror as we entered the conference room to find a smattering of 30-year old men, their common bond seeming to be obesity and pony tails. These living, breathing “Comic Book Guy” impersonators were gathered around old toys and boxes upon boxes of comic books. The din of hushed conversation about whether Black Cat or Catwoman was hotter was only overpowered by the attendees’ collective labored breathing.

The few children that were present clung to the hands of their fathers, men who eyed mint condition Boba Fett toys with the kind of hunter’s gleam that is usually reserved for barflies trying to pick up women.

A lone woman browsed through a dealer’s selection, her every move studied by love struck geeks too nervous to even breathe near her.

After scanning the room quickly, I made my way to the first artist’s booth.

I was low on cash and was not interested in the dealer’s floor. My primary objective was to collect the two artists’ John Hancocks and leave with a minimum of monetary damage.

I picked up a book from each artist and stood in line for my first autograph.

Mike Grell, illustrator/writer, was a grizzled old man hobbled over his sketch pad, fervently drawing a buxom image of some warrior woman for a sweaty man dressed in a too-tight Star Wars shirt. The line of those waiting for an autograph seemed to crawl as Grell switched between drawing sketches and signing books. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched my father move from booth to booth, staring in pity at the men who had devoted their life towards recapturing their childhood.

When I finally got within reach of Mr. Grell, he was working on a sketch. I stood patiently, watching the pro masterfully work his pen and pencil.

As I waited, a large figure filled the space to the right of me. I turned to look at who had just cut in front of me and saw the largest Mexican I had ever encountered.

Covered in bristle-like hair, the man-child resembled a cross between Danny Trejo and Louie Anderson. He asked Grell in a voice that rang out like Giant Man himself, “Are you signing comic books?”

Grell looked up at the individual and, after allowing himself a double take, nodded a quick yes and reached for the man’s book.

Faster then the Flash, my father appeared at my side. He whispered into my ear in a harsh tone, “You can’t let people cut in front of you! Speak up for yourself.”

I gave my dad a quick nod in agreement but that was not enough for my old man.

“You need to stand up for yourself,” he warned. “Otherwise, people are going to walk right over you for the rest of your life.”

Mr. Grell took only a few extra seconds to sign the Man-Child’s book before he turned to sign mine but those few stolen seconds seemed, to my dad, to be a personal attack on everything our family stood for. As I walked away from my fuming father, I stood in line for the second artist.

I cannot remember the other artist’s name for the life of me, but I do recall that he was Brazilian and he worked with a speed and rhythm that seemed uncanny.

It appeared to me that the artist could sketch with one hand while signing with the other. As I waited, the line in front of me quickly melted away.

The whole time, though, I was distracted from watching the artist work by the shadow of my father’s anxious figure as he supervised the proceedings. He had tired of the dealers’ floor and had taken active interest in my quest to gain autographs.

As the artist finished a quick sketch of the Flash, the same Mexican Man-Child appeared out of nowhere to stand at my right again. This time, it appeared he was hypnotized by the artist’s speed.

He clutched his comic book to his chest as his eyes followed the artist’s rapidly-moving hands.

The artist finished his sketch and looked up to call upon his next task when he saw the Man-Child. Standing next to this 6-foot-five, 300-plus pound mountain of a man, I naturally disappeared into the background.

My hair could have been on fire and the artist would have only noticed the comic book desperately clutched in the Man-Child’s sweaty hands. The Brazilian asked if the Man-Child would like the book signed. He mouthed a hushed yes before handing the artist the crumpled book.

My dad witnessed the Man-Child’s repeat offense and the dam broke. Exploding into a gnashing of sound and fury, my father roared, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Not comprehending what was occurring, the Man-Child only managed to mouth the word “Wha-?” before my father was in his face.

“You’re cutting in front of the boy again! That is the second time you’ve cut line. I don’t know how you people were raised to behave, but in a civilized society there’s such thing as waiting in lines.”

“I didn’t cut in line!” the Man-Child said, clearly confused by what was happening.

“Don’t give me that! We all saw you.”

By this time, the room had undergone a complete hush. Every eye was focused on the furious form of my father and the confused heap of fat and hair that stood next to me, already beginning to quiver with an untapped rage.

The artist tried to calm the rolling rock that had been unearthed but to no effect.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t see your son.”

“You stay out of this,” my father replied. “Get a real job!”

He quickly returned to his angered belittling of the Man-Child.

I quickly offered my book to the artist who signed it with a defeated aura.

We left shortly afterwards.

During the car trip home, my dad talked my ear off about how I needed to stand up for myself. It was my duty as an American to speak up against the injustices of life. He wasn’t going to always be there to look out for me, he warned.

I couldn’t have despised my dad more then I did during that trip home. I spent the ride steaming inwardly as I buried my nose in my comic book.

When I was young, it seemed as if my dad was always attacking innocent cashiers and waiters who got on the wrong end of his short fuse. Not satisfied with piss poor service, my dad would always demand perfection when it came to a job. He was not afraid to return hamburgers to the cooks or call out slow service with an almost gleeful fury. It was often an embarrassment to eat out with my dad. Going to the store was not any better. My father would often compare stories with my uncle about their exploits at terrorizing stock boys and cashiers.

Flash forward three years and I’m standing in line at the local on-campus café. The waiter has to be the stupidest girl ever to work food service. As she stares at me with a vacant expression in her eyes and her mouth hanging ajar I can’t help but verbally assault her, asking for quicker service and at least a quarter of her concentration. I have turned into my dad in more ways then one.

I have inherited his impatience, his sense of humor, even his snore.

Now, as I find myself living away from home and visiting him only on the rare occasion, I realize that my dad was not the bad guy that I made him out to be when I was younger. In his own way, he was merely trying to teach me valuable life lessons that I could take with me into my future. He was a real-life superhero, trying to impose upon me a sense of value and a code of living that I would use to define right and wrong — to learn about truth, justice and the American way.

My dad didn’t understand all of my hobbies, but that didn’t matter. He supported my interests even if it meant having to be face-to-face with a sad reminder of the loser comic book nerd I could potentially turn into — that is, without the ethics he was imparting upon me.

I have found that the love for my father and the memories I have with him (such as our first and only comic book convention) more then make up for any slight embarrassment I felt as a kid.

My dad won’t be around forever, but the memory of him telling the poor Brazilian comic book artist to get a real job will be. And in the end, that’s what’s really important.

Read more stories of my childhood.