Читать книгу Ten Twenty Ten - Stephen Polando - Страница 3

My name is Stephen Polando. It is pronounced “Stefan” because “ph” always makes an “ef” sound, as I learned using Hooked on Phonics as a child. The only time “ph” ever makes a “vee” sound is when people misspell their own kids’ names in hopes of just making up some phonetic rules that do not exist. This leaves people like me to be called “Steven” every day. It is a laughable and vastly underrated social injustice.

I am 6-foot-4 and weigh an imposing 160 pounds. I have olive skin, brown hair that I brush back to the left, and waves in the front. I slouch a little so I’m rarely a full 6-4. People have told me way more than a few times that I look like James Franco. Perhaps because I squint. I know this because people also used to say I looked like Josh Hartnett, and that squint is something all three of us have in common.

The most important thing to know about me as a person is that I desperately want to make the people around me laugh. Like Robin Williams, I find the laughter of others to be a drug, and I need it. The second most important thing is that I am exceptionally kind, and I want to help people in need, as badly as I want to make them laugh.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan at 5:58 a.m. March 14, 1985, in the same hospital that Harry Houdini had died in 59 years earlier. Most of my extended family still resides in the suburbs of Detroit. Some have scattered around the country. We spent a few years in the rural town of Urbana, Ohio, during which my parents had my brother, Nicholas -- three years, six months, and six days after my birth. He doesn’t remember Ohio at all.

Our family ended up in Chandler, Arizona. The nation’s forty-eighth state has been his only real home. Nicholas is about 5-foot-10 with light brown hair and green eyes, which he is very proud of. He is shorter than me, and also a bit stockier than me, but, then again, that’s not really saying much because, who isn’t? He’s about 180 pounds with round John Lennon-like glasses. He also has a mustache, so he kind of looks like a walrus. He is a few shades whiter than I am. People rarely think we are brothers. They also consistently think he is older. He prefers Nicholas, but people shorten it to Nick anyway because nobody likes him. Just kidding, he’s actually the best character in this story.

At the time we moved to Chandler, there were about 70,000 residents. It’s a city southeast of Phoenix that was created in 1912, founded by a veterinarian by the name of Dr. A.J. Chandler. Chandler High School has iconic pillars in front and one could easily argue that, despite being one of the oldest, it is the most beautiful high school in the state. I graduated from Chandler High in 2003.

Today, Chandler has about 270,000 residents. So I got to see a small city get built up around our family as we settled in. I grew up at 1413 North Bullmoose Drive. It was a humble one-story, three-bedroom home, with a palm tree on each side of the driveway and an island of grass in the center of the front yard. We were the fourth house on a street of eight houses that looked at a large park at the center of our neighborhood. The park shared space with our elementary school. The view from our home was South Mountain to the west. It was truly picturesque and my mother often mentioned never moving from this house.

Make no mistake, Arizona is the sunset capital of the world. In large part, that’s because it gets more than 300 days of sunshine per year. With so many sunsets, you’re bound to have the best odds. It’s just simple probability.

My mom was born Jean Dembowski, the fourth of six children, in Redford, Michigan, which is about 15 miles outside Detroit. She is 5-foot-3 with light brown hair. She looks just a little bit different from all her brothers and sisters but in a picture they are all very clearly related. Her closest sister, Jan, was killed by a drunk driver on March 4, 1983, almost exactly two years before I was born. She was 21 years old. The driver was an ex-boyfriend of hers, who also happened to be a cop. He was fine, but she died on impact. He slammed her side of the car head-on into a pole. It was still crooked when I was younger, and I’m not sure if it’s ever been fixed. He received a slap on the wrist, because he was a cop. Truly an injustice for my mom’s family.

This was around the time Jean met my dad, Ross Polando, as well. They had worked together at a Bill Knapp’s Restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan, and fell in love. They got married on April 6, 1984. This first little blessing was born March 14, 1985 -- after Jean endured three-and-a-half days of labor. (It’s important I mention that because I’ve heard it about 7,000 times in my life and it would be a disservice to my mother’s account of my birth to leave that out.) Nonetheless, it was a pretty eventful two years and 10 days for my parents.

Jean is one of the nicest and hardest-working people I know. She is also one of the most social butterflies among all the butterflies. She is exceptionally supportive and, at the end of the day, the reason she enabled me through my addiction for so long is because she was hoping it would somehow help. She was not naive to the fact that I had a problem. She, just, like most parents when confronted with this dilemma, didn’t really know what the fuck to do.

She also really believed in my ability to figure it out. Because that’s who she is as a mother. She empowered my brother and me. She always believed we would do something with our lives, even when we struggled. Eventually, she was going to be rewarded. Like most things in life, though, it ended up being a far more difficult process than she imagined. Kind of like when she had me. She thought the three and a half days of labor was bad, but I bet the 25 years after that were significantly more challenging. No situation was more challenging for her than my drinking.

My mom is actually older than my dad. When I was born, she had just turned 25, and he was 23. Jean always said that my dad was amazingly supportive after she lost her sister. I can attest that he is extremely emotionally intelligent. I believe that quality, along with his quick wit, are the two characteristics I got from him that I am most thankful that I have. Ross is so funny when he is playful and I have always tried to do my best to find my playfulness as well, to bring out the best of him within me.

My parents ended up divorcing when I was a freshman in high school. It probably should have been sooner than that. They often kept me awake arguing. Not nasty stuff, just passionately raised voices. They fought over money, religion, drinking, and my grades, among other things. When my dad left the house, as much as it feels shitty to say this, our lives at home got better.

I now had full control of the TV at most times. As a 14-year-old, that felt like a big deal. My dad quickly jumped into a relationship with a woman who lived literally three blocks away. Her name was Jan. So from Jean to Jan and it only changed his location less than a quarter-mile. Jan was nice, never had kids, and her parents lived on her street as well. What we really liked about her was that she had four dogs. We had never been allowed to get one, so her three labs and what could only be described as a coyote were pretty great for us. Also, Ross was now giving us like $50 a week in allowance. So he was really making moves to win us over. Jean just stayed the course and worked hard and kept being a mom. In the end, she would win.

My dad ended up getting 3 DUIs in the course of a couple years. He would spend a few months in jail. Jan and my dad went out drinking a lot. He was kind of able to let loose, with no responsibility of being a father to kids in a home. I’m sure that given the option he would have loved to have more custody, but I think it was just Thursdays and every other weekend. Either way, it was cool at first, but ultimately I just liked being home more. Jan and Ross also started fighting. He would have a toxic relationship of his own before I had even met Tiffany.

For most of my youth, my mom was a Realtor. But she also worked as a postal worker for a time and now works for DHL. She left real estate after the market crashed in 2008. She wanted a steady paycheck. My mother became a very devout Catholic over the last few years of her marriage. In fact, I would personally say the reasons my parents divorced were because my dad felt my mom got too religious and my mom felt my dad’s drinking was a problem. The reality is that they were both right. Church gave my mom a place where people shared her views about life and supported her. Every Sunday my mom would talk to friends she had made for an hour while my brother and I would wait impatiently, squirming and complaining about how bored we were.

My dad grew up going to Catholic school but he always felt religion was “forced down” his throat and didn’t want the same for us. I can definitely relate to that. I can say that I found times when church was enjoyable, but I never wanted to go. I never truly bought in. That’s not to say I didn’t believe in God. I would never go as far as to say that; I just probably believe more in the universe as a whole. I simplify it to this: if you’re a good person, who works hard and treats others well, I tend to think life is going to work out favorably for you. It is not lost on me the fact that some people do this and still lose their life tragically. I have no answer as to why, because none of us does. No matter what religion you adhere to, some things cannot be explained in life. Religion gives people purpose and direction in life, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I saw the support a church congregation can give to members of their parish, and it’s powerful, especially in difficult times.

One thing dominated my youth more than anything else: Sports.

Early on it was baseball, basketball, and football. Football was probably my favorite. My dad would throw passes to me as we drove down the field in the final minute of the fourth quarter to lead Michigan over Notre Dame or Ohio State. I was always emulating Desmond Howard or Derrick Alexander, famous Wolverine wide receivers. I loved Michigan football more than anything else early on in my life. To this day, I still love Michigan football. The maize and blue uniforms, with the winged helmets. (I will never be convinced there is a better uniform in all of sports, nor are there two colors that go together better than those two.) These memories with my father are some of the most vivid and happy of my childhood. Ross was a very good father when I was young. He worked a lot, as a food service director for Chandler Regional Hospital. That was the job transfer that brought us to Arizona.

I remember him playing with me a lot. Sports has always been our shared passion and what bonded us more than anything else. Later in life, emotional intelligence would become a close second.

I made most of my friends through sports. In T-ball we were coached by local legend Paul Spangenberg, who was the father of three boys -- Michael, David, and Brandon. Mike was my age, the oldest, and was my teammate in this one year of T-ball. We played for the Astros and, contrary to popular belief, we did not steal signs from other Tball teams. It was the lowest level of baseball so we mostly just had fun getting lost on the basepaths.

I would eventually start playing baseball for a new team, under the tutelage of Tom Curtiss. He’s one of the better men I’ve ever known. His son David became one of my best friends. They lived next door to the first friend I ever made in Arizona, Joey Spadola. Joey’s parents, Don and Donna, along with Tom and his wife, Jan, became some of my parents’ best friends.

Another teammate was Guy Saggione and his two sets of parents, Guy and Joanna and Terri and Fred. These three friends and four sets of parents were my extended family as a child. Mike was also in this group, along with another kid named Tyler Markichevich. Those two were best buddies, and, frankly, a bit cooler than the rest of us. All of us were pretty good little athletes, and equally competitive. At school we played soccer every day. We all played basketball and baseball on the same teams. Tom coached baseball, and Guy’s dad, Big Guy, coached basketball.

In the second grade, Tom started calling me “Stick Boy.” Because of my extremely slender figure, this caught on real quick. To this day, most of my friends still call me “Stick,” and I would argue that several people I’ve known in life may not have ever known my real name.

Last year Tom Curtiss passed away. I spoke at his celebration of life. I spoke about how what seemed like a silly nickname actually gave me an identity in life. That it is symbolic of the kind of impact all of these people had on my life. None of my friends or their parents is a perfect human. However, they all significantly impacted my life and shaped me with good character that I can be proud of. Nearly all of my memories of these people correlate with happiness. I loved all of these people, and they loved me. Because of that, I had a very happy childhood.

At some point in between all the other sports, I found the truest love I have ever known, in the game of hockey. Ross raised me to be a Detroit Red Wings fan. Steve Yzerman is my hero. I spent countless hours in our driveway on rollerblades scoring goals and pretending to be “Stevie Y” or members of the famed “Russian 5” that the Red Wings featured in the 1990s. I scored so many imaginary goals on Patrick Roy it’s insane. At some point I even got my friends in on the game of hockey. As a child I loved hockey more than anything and would regularly impress adults with my knowledge. I often still joke that I have a Ph.D. in sports. I can usually tell in less than a minute if the person I’m talking to is a casual sports fan, a pretend enthusiast, or an actual enthusiast like myself. Ladies and gentleman, I am a sports snob.

My friends and I all attended Goodman Elementary School across the street. Home of the Gators. Most of my friends lived right down the street or just a couple blocks away. Everybody lived within the square mile between Dobson and Price roads east to west and Warner and Ray roads north to south. It is actually just outside Tempe and I probably spent 25 of my 35 years living in this area. When I go back today, it still feels like home. Nobody still lives in those respective houses but they all still mean something to me when I see them. Occasionally I will drive through the neighborhood at Christmas, when many homes are decorated in lights. It’s always a fun and happy time to run into random people you grew up with.

Sometime during the fourth grade, Guy Saggione ended up becoming my best friend. He still is to this day. Guy was always “Little Guy” because his father was “Big Guy.” His dad was from Chicago and was very Italian. He owned a couple of hair salons. Guy’s mom, Terri, also owned a hair salon, in Old Town Scottsdale. His parents were divorced for as long as I’ve known him but they stayed close and almost had a best-friend relationship. Which I can attest sets a great example for your kids and their friends.

For a pretty large part of my life, Guy and I were inseparable. We remained best friends throughout high school. We would meet up at the Starbucks he worked at most Friday and Saturday nights before going out. Our group of friends then consisted of us two, as well as Luis, who I met in the eighth grade. We had gym class together and right away we liked each other because we were two of the better athletes in class. We were both skinny and ultra-competitive. Two weeks into our new friendship, I confronted a classmate about calling me a poor sport. When I say I confronted him, I mean that I asked him, “Hey, did you call me a poor sport?” So, not very aggressive. He then proceeded to smash my face into his knee.

Luis had my back and chased him down, only to lose a front tooth in the altercation. Luis was from a Mexican family and so they took him to Mexico to get the dental work done. This resulted in the new tooth being a shade of green. So it often would get made of fun of. I always wore it like, “He got that shit being a good friend, so please shut the fuck up.”

Rounding out our crew was a couple named Mike and Katie. We called Mike “Money,” though. The four of us, along with whatever girls Luis and Guy dated, would spend most weeknights on my mom’s patio smoking hookah and listening to music. It was like our very own “That ‘70s Show.”

My mom would occasionally make us margaritas. Nicholas would come and hang out as well, and sometimes we would all go in and play Halo on Xbox. These memories are some of my most cherished from our home. It’s when all of us became so much closer. Guy ended up being the best man for both Money and Luis in their weddings. I was Guy’s best man when he married Kelly in our late 20s. Guy is one of the most charming people I have ever met. He is a real-life Joey Tribbiani of “Friends,” maybe not as dumb, though. He now has a son and a daughter. His son, of course, is “Baby Guy.”

After high school, I tried doing a year of community college. But I wasn’t truly engaged. I was going to school because it was what I was supposed to be doing. I didn’t really take it seriously, and quickly realized it was a waste of money. I ended up doing one semester, and basically decided the school route wasn’t for me. I spent a lot of my free time hanging out with my friends at Starbucks and going out to college parties on the weekends. I definitely lived like I was going to college, and hung out with all the people that were going to college. I just wasn’t doing so myself.

It was a fun couple years of just working and partying with my friends. I didn’t overdo it. I would never drink and drive or do anything reckless. Sometimes I would just get too drunk and pass out. That was my fatal flaw when I drank. Like any 18- or 19-year-old, I was really just trying to meet people of the opposite sex while enjoying my youth.