Old Wildcat Hollow

I've been in Lexington recently. It's a city on the west end of Columbia in South Carolina, and where I grew up. My mother still lives in the house I grew up in, and I'll be visiting her for the next two weeks before the job in Birmingham starts. I don't know anyone in Birmingham yet, and there wasn't enough time to get a summer job, so I thought it best to crash with my family and spend some time with old friends. I'm running low on cash, so renting that room from my friend is no longer a viable option. It was sad to move out of her place, but I can't afford double rent, and I refuse to mooch off of friends. Family I can mooch off of forever. While it is a family's duty to allow for the occasional week or two mooching of relatives, nothing will kill a friendship faster than mooching more than a 3 day period.

While it's been great to be at home, I am really ready for work to start; I feel a lack of purpose at the moment. It's funny. There truly is no place like home. It's a place you can't wait to leave, but a place you always long to return to. Nothing feels better than coming home, but once home - then what? What comes next?

Columbia was (and still is) a wonderland for me. The city has a great vibe, the parks are beautiful, and I love the zoo and museums. L-town (short for Lexington) on the other hand, I have a love/hate relationship with. Growing up here had plenty of ups, but a lot of downs. I always felt isolated, because I wasn't like the other kids on my street. They were farmers and hunters. I was the son of a stay-at-home-mom and a dad that taught leadership, training, and management classes for a chemical company. I was a city kid that lived on a dirt road surrounded by country boys.

The isolation continued at school, because I wasn't the child of a lawyer or a doctor. In the South, nepotism reigns supreme, and a family name will take you far. I didn't carry a prestiged family name; I wasn't so-and-so's great-grandchild. My family was lower middle-class in a city that privileged wealth and status. Neither of my parents held prestigious jobs, so there was no way to overcome the lack of namesake. We also went to church in Irmo (another city on the west-end of Columbia, north of L-town). Irmo and Lexington were fierce rivals, and I was the only Lexingtonian in my Sunday School class. Yet another barrier towards my full integration, I could never get excited when churchmates cheered for their schools, and no one wanted to invite a rival to their school's events.

My isolation became complete, however, with my own actions. I used to cry a lot. I mean a lot. I was a huge crybaby. I was the kid you wanted to punch to make him stop fucking crying. Other kids thought something was wrong with me, and many adults didn't know how to approach the situation. FYI, if you ever encounter a seemingly normal child who randomly bursts into tears, he/she has emotional problems indicative of troubles elsewhere in their lives. It is abnormal for a child to burst into tears about a minor embarrassment, so there is probably something going on under the surface.

I rarely cried at home, however, because at home I had to be the adult. I had to take care of my mother when she went psychotic, which was more frequent than not. To this day, I have a hard time dealing with emotions because of emotional scars as a child. Somewhere deep inside there was a crying child - a lonely child wanting to be normal - a child wanting to belong, but somewhere along the way I told that child to "shut the Hell up, and keep on trucking." I no longer cry in public, but I also have years of distance on many of my emotional scars, and am able to balance (although precariously at times) all of my issues. I have gotten the child to stop crying, to be happy with who he is, and to express his emotions in other ways.

I used to beg my parents to move, however. Other kids wanted to stay put, but I wanted to leave. I wanted a different house, on another side of town, where I could be someone else. I recognized that my crying had placed too much damage on my reputation at school, and by changing schools, I could start over. Whenever my parents suggested moving, I would suggest houses I had seen for sale, and ask when we could go house hunting.

My obsession eventually came to a place, however, where house hunting became more important than changing schools. I had decided in my childhood brain that maybe a more expensive house would improve my rankings at school. Other kids sometimes weren't allowed to play with me, because our house wasn't nice. Certain parents didn't want their kids playing with children - like me - who were beneath them.

One time when I was a child, I had a play-date with another kid at my house. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. I barely remember this, but my father relayed the full story when I got older. My father and I were waiting in the driveway when the car (I believe it was a mini-van) pulled up. The driver slowed down to survey the house, while the kid in the backseat pointed happily with a huge smile on his face. Then, without warning, the driver hit the gas. Gravel spun out from under the tires; the kid in the backseat - no longer smiling - started yelling for the driver to stop. The kid continued crying as the van raced out of sight down the dirt road. I turned to my dad - in tears - wanting to know why. Unfortunately, I don't remember what my father told me that day. All I remembered for years was not getting to play with my friend.

I would like to say that that was the only time a kid wasn't allowed to play with me because of where I lived, but it happened more than once. That moment, however, was the most telling - and one very straightforward way of making a point. Before moments like that, I never knew my house was inferior. It was house. It was just a house. After being denied friendships because of it, however, I knew something had to be wrong with it - or wrong with me. It never crossed my mind that there was something wrong with the other people.

My desire to search for houses, therefore, got worse as I got older. In high school and college, when my parents brought up moving I would bring them real-estate pamphlets.

"I don't like that house," my father would retort.
"There are others for sale!" I would say as I shoved another pamphlet at him.
"We can't afford to move."
"This one's cheaper!"
"I don't want to look at these right now."
"Then why did you bring up moving?"

Despite my best efforts, and most of the ink in our printer, they never moved, and now I'm kind of glad for that. A sense of permanence is nice, and so what if the house isn't the greatest? It does its job. It's also good to come home, even if it sometimes leaves me wondering what's next.

So many memories fill this house, and since I grew up in L-town, every street is a memory. So naturally when I was taking off the trash today - the trash dump brought up memories of my father. We would load up the old black truck (later it would be the blue truck), and wander off down Wise Ferry and over to the Ball Park Road waste collection facility. (To this day, there is still no waste collection on our street; so if you don't like living surrounded by garbage bags, you have to load the truck and haul bags of trash several miles to the dump.) Afterwards, my dad would generally go to a local gas station and buy us each a Coke and a candy bar. I can rarely remember an outing when we didn't go to a gas station and get snacks. The world was ours in those moments, but this post isn't about my father, so I'll save that for another time.

After dropping off the trash, I took a left toward town. I had a few errands to run, and I thought I'd drive down past the old football stadium.

A few years ago, my high school built a new football stadium on the high school's campus. The old stadium was/is about 2 miles away from the campus on Ball Park Rd. Most of my autumn Friday nights were spent at this old stadium - Wildcat Hollow. I'd carpool with my friends - find a seat near the band (most of my friends were Band Geeks; I was practically a band mascot), and wait until the 3rd quarter. The marching band was given the 3rd quarter off for conversation and refreshments, and we'd walk around the Hollow gossiping about any and everything - well everything except football. No one really cared about the football game (except for the players, and the game against Irmo - we all hated Irmo.)

The last time I drove by the stadium, the grass was overgrown, and it looked to be in a state of disrepair. Today, however, the grass had been freshly mowed, and it looked almost like it had a decade ago - when it was THE Friday night location for high schoolers and townspeople alike. Yet, it was empty. Not a car in the parking lots, not a single person in the stands. (I learned after some investigative googling that a semi-pro team is now using Old Wildcat Hollow for their games - hence the field being manicured).

Driving by the stadium, all of the memories came flooding back to me. The ghosts of those Friday nights reminded me of my endless quest for belonging - my desire to be popular, my want of a different house. There they all stood in an abandoned football stadium. It's funny what time does. Now no one cares that I used to cry, and the people that matter don't give a damn about my social standing. If they do, they aren't people I choose to associate with. Why then was it so important a decade ago? Old Wildcat Hollow may be empty, but nothing has really changed - except for me.

All those misspent years of wanting to be popular... If I had just opened my eyes I would have realized I was popular. I was popular and liked by the people that mattered - by my friends, by the band geeks, by those who had gotten to know me. By those that didn't care that I cried. I didn't need a fancy house, or a fancy name for them to be my friends. Why did I feel isolated? Why did I feel inferior?

In a way, the quest to be popular is like Old Wildcat Hollow. It's empty. It's a quest that can never make you truly happy. But on the same token, an old abandoned football stadium can also remind you of what it's like to be popular - an echo of friendships and Friday nights. In each way, Old Wildcat Hollow is like a monument to my past - a part that not only symbolizes my feelings of difference - my isolation, but also a part that reminds me of my friendships, my integration, and my connection to the whole. If my parents had moved to another city, I would never have experienced the friendships I had. If I had gotten a better house, I still would have been the boy who cried. Who knows? I might have missed out on Friday nights at the Hollow, and may have missed out on a valuable lesson. Looking at that empty stadium, I never thought I'd be as thankful as I am for what I have.

Now, if only I could get a fucking boyfriend...