Peotone High School Archives, Volume 1

Recently I was able to rescue some footage shot during high school that was thought to be lost for all time.  Our group made several little short movies during high school and my friend Tom was fortunate enough to even have some of them on a VHS tape.  I converted this tape to DVD and uploaded the videos to YouTube.  I shared this on Facebook but I’m not certain how many people saw them.  Additionally, I’ve found that YouTube has removed the audio portion of at least one of those videos due to copyright infringement. I assure you if I could make any money off this, I would have done so.  Just to be clear, I don’t own the rights to any copyrighted material.  I’ve since uploaded these videos to a hopefully less scrutinized area, so you’ll need to follow the link at the bottom.  As a bonus, I’m offering you some behind-the-scenes commentary on each video.  Hope you enjoy it!

I. I Shot The Sheriff

This video was shot during senior year (circa 2000) for my Public Speaking class. We had an assignment to lip sync a song. It didn't need to be filmed but we decided to have a little fun with it. Yours truly is featured as Bob Marley. Kyle Pedigo, Tom Prokop, Brian Delaney, Tom Coursey, and Clayton Thompson took part in the drug bust and faked playing instruments. Josh Bult joined for the song and may have been the only one actually playing something. The man behind the camera was Jon Solita. Collectively, they became The Wailers, affectionately known as the NEPCO Gang (inside joke) for our purposes.

If we were going to sing about shooting the sheriff, then by golly we needed to show someone being shot. The set up was to have me, as Marley, purchase some pot from a drug dealer (Pedigo). A raid would ensue and I would shoot said sheriff (Delaney). I borrowed a rasta wig and applied a ton of brown paint to my face, neck, and hands. It took forever to wash off that paint once we were done. One detail I overlooked was pants; I don't remember Bob having pale white legs. We borrowed some police equipment and riot gear from Coursey's dad, a Will County cop. Mr. Coursey had issues with us portraying Will County cops, so a Cook County patch was acquired and taped over the uniform's actual badge. You can see this when the camera zooms in on the dead sheriff.

There is not a whole heck of a lot to say about the song. I regretted being filmed holding a sheet of paper with the lyrics.  I knew the words; the sheet was strictly precautionary.  I also want to reiterate that my lip syncing was on point the entire song.  About halfway through, it appears as though I am a little behind.  I assure you this is entirely a technology glitch.  I’d like to commend Delaney for his enthusiastic delivery of the chorus, which is apparent from the song’s opening line.  Coursey looks hilarious standing there in the riot gear, and Bult gives us a nice a little jig at the end.  I do my best to get down with my reggae self as the song plays out to the end.  It was a fun night and I’m pretty sure we got an A on it.

Watch the video here.

The Summer Of Dave

I wanted to share something positive with you all.  I really did.  I just cannot help but feel a little snake bit.  I know, the problems in my life that I write about are all fairly minor, relatively speaking.  Everything is all relative though, isn’t it?  I’m writing this by candlelight because the power is out and I can’t watch the Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Finals.  Ah, first world problems, as my friend Tom would say.

A few weeks ago I was in a pretty good place mentally.  Truth be told, I was even contemplating composing a “final” contribution to this blog.  See, I had figured that The Younker Rules had simply run its course.  Perhaps I was too arrogant in thinking that my writing would influence any real change in my life.  Perhaps I was just running out of things to say.  My “rules” were and are pretty stupid I suppose.  I’ve followed them for most of my life and haven’t exactly gotten the results I hoped for.  This failure extends to many areas in my life, most of which I’ve written about in some form or other. 

I’ve learned that no one gives a damn that you bestow strikes upon them for failing to show up to a scheduled event.  They are not any more inclined to hang out with you in the future.  I’ve surmised that girls won’t be impressed by some crazy, outside-the-box approach to dating.  The game has been played in largely the same way since the modern world came to be.  You also can’t have a defined list of criteria and choose to explicitly follow it.  Eric Carmen’s All By Myself just popped up on my iPod.  That's not relevant, but it's still fitting I thought.   I’ve discovered that the universe is not trying to give me a sign with every little thing that happens.  It has better things to do than convince me why I shouldn’t go to that party.

The definition of insanity is repeating the same experiment over and over expecting different results.  They say rules are meant to be broken.  If there were ever a set of rules to which this mantra applies, then surely it is mine.  It feels like I’m committing suicide in the slowest, most painless way possible.  Think about a million tiny paper cuts all over your body.  Shockingly, the potential abandonment of all the principles I’ve held near and dear to my heart for so long didn’t really bother me.  I was probably just on the positive swing of my attitude pendulum, but I was ready to unleash a new mindset.  This was going to be the ‘Summer of Dave’.  I was going to try and make myself more available for social functions.  I was going to take on new challenges.  Heck, I might have even gone after a hypothetical girl who my former rules would have precluded me from engaging.

Things started swimmingly enough.  I was going to be playing on a co-ed kickball team.  Words cannot express how pumped I was for this activity.  In addition to kickball being a sport I reckon I’d be pretty good at, co-ed events are generally pretty fun on their own merit.  The chance to hang out with some new women?  Why not?  I should give credit where credit is due.  My friend Abi did a lot of the legwork to fill out the roster, especially the female portion of it, which I would never have been able to acquire on my own.

As fate would have it, I get news that the league was cancelled due to a lack of teams.  Now, just in case there were going to be enough teams, fate had a backup plan to derail my summer fun.  Around the same time, I screwed up my knee playing basketball.  Of course it was during the seventh and final game of the night.  The play was eerily similar to the Derrick Rose torn ACL injury in the way it unfolded.  As I crumple to floor, I assume the worst. 

The worst case scenario usually plays through my head at times like these.  Maybe it’s because I’ve never had a serious injury like that and I feel gypped.  I waited a few days and the pain didn’t really subside so I figured it was time to schedule a doctor’s appointment.  I should preface this by stating that I rarely ever go to the hospital.  I have had the good fortune of being a fairly healthy person (I have not used a sick day at work since 2008!), and I usually just try to tough things out. 

When I called to set up an appointment with an orthopedic doctor (it was my knee after all), they said they didn’t have any openings for a month.  A month?!  They referred me to family practice.  To illustrate how long it has been since I’ve gone to have anything checked out, I should mention that my primary doctor no longer works there and the entire hospital has moved locations.  They also gave me the same run-around about it being a month before any doctor could see me.  What the hell is going on this world?  Is the entire health of the south suburban population deteriorating that much?  Are people scheduling appointments for every teensy little pain that afflicts them?   Is the hospital that badly understaffed? 

By this point, I was getting a little perturbed on the phone.  Fortunately, I kept my cool.  I may be seething internally but it rarely bubbles to the surface in the form of any external rage.  Did I ever say before that I hate talking on phones?  I feel like I have but it bears repeating.  I need to get over this fear because apparently my new role at work is going to require me calling some insurance agencies.  Can’t they just respond to my emails?  Calling hospitals is no different.  I’d like to schedule an appointment to have my knee checked out. … … What’s wrong?  … … I, uh, don’t know exactly, but it hurts to bend it and walk.  [Insert some generic questions about how it happened and my responses.]  Then they start asking about my insurance and I get a little nervous.  I have health insurance of course, but again, I use it so infrequently that I’m not sure I’ll have answers to all of the questions they pose.  It’s like expecting me to remember my debit card pin # when I use it twice a year.

My parents have suggested that I should over exaggerate my illness or pain when I am looking to get an appointment.  It’s a back door way through the system.  Even the fine, upstanding Gene Younker advocates this approach in certain instances.  Perhaps he just realizes better than I how to play the game.  In this particular case, I would hardly call my situation an “emergency”.  Sure, I was limping around in a bunch of pain, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t life-threatening.   Yes, I wanted to get it looked at soon, but it didn’t need immediate attention.  It just never seems right to me to advertise aches and pains as more than they are when someone else out there may really need the attention pronto.  There has be to some set of rules in place, doesn’t there?

Perhaps it’s that false sense of entitlement that our generation is often accused of, but I feel like the medical industry should be more accommodating of me.  I ask so very little of it; when I do, I want some attention, dammit!  It’s kind of like when I schedule parties or an outing. (That reminds me. I keep putting off the after-work event I’m supposed to schedule.)  I do it so infrequently that I kind of just expect you to show up.  Maybe that’s why the whole “three strikes” thing came about.  I felt the need to punish these insolent people in some way.   Alright, I better stop and re-focus.  This is starting to become about the old rules again, and they’re supposed to be a thing of the past, right?

Anyway, I finally worked it out so that a physician’s assistant could see me.  Fine.  Whatever.  I just needed something to ease my injury paranoia.  It was with a Dr. Kirby.  Ugh.  I just cannot escape that name. (Cheers if you know what I’m talking about.)  The doctor said that rest was the best medicine for my injury.  He said it could very easily take 8 weeks (or more) to fully heal.  That’s not exactly the answer I was looking for but I was certain that it was just doctor-speak to be sure I used extra caution.  I took the anti-inflammatory pills I was prescribed and wore the knee brace I was instructed to purchase.  He did order an X-ray albeit on the wrong knee, but I knew that wasn’t going to show anything.  I wanted an MRI; I’ve never had one.  Back to feeling like I’m missing out I guess.

Things started to get a little better and I was entertaining the idea of being back in action in a couple weeks.  I was able to mostly walk without any pain and I even managed to stagger around the yard and cut the grass with a push mower.  That was a week ago. 

I lined up a sub to play for me in softball this past Monday.  Given the progress my knee was making, I felt like my return was near.  I decided to bring my equipment along (just in case) and even pondered the idea of being a DH (I’d just have someone pinch run if I got on base).  I was itching to get back out there in some form.  I wrestled with the idea of hitting during the drive to the field.  As the de facto manager, I ultimately left my name off the card when filling out the lineup.  There was no sense in taking any unnecessary risks.  I was even a little proud of myself; I had resisted every urge in my body to make the responsible choice. 

We play doubleheaders and in between games, two of our players needed to leave for an emergency (a legitimate one).  There was no way to find 2 replacement players in such short notice.  Fortunately, my friend Brian was sitting in the stands (in regular clothes) watching the game.  We pressed him into duty but that still left us 1 short.  It didn’t take a genius, at least to me, to figure out where the 10^th was going to come from.  I was dressed for the part and had my equipment.  Yes, we could have played with 9, but I didn’t want to put the team at that disadvantage.  My earlier logic was tossed out the window at this point.  As I’m prone to do, I saw the departure of our other 2 players as the signal that I should get out there.

I decided to play pitcher instead of catcher because I figured it would be more painful to bend down and catch the balls.  It was incredibly frustrating being on that mound at less than 100%.  There was a popup that dropped because I could not spring off the mound quick enough.  There was a ground ball hit back through the middle that I could not bend down to grab.  Both were plays I would have made under normal circumstances.  I’m not sure if the opponents just assumed those were plays I never make, but it bugged me to even think they would consider that possibility.

When it finally came time to hit for the first time, a teammate pulled me aside and asked if I really wanted to do this.  No sense in trying to be a hero, he said.  I heard him but I wasn’t really listening.  I’d be fine.  Truthfully, I was really hoping to get walked to make things really easy.  Unfortunately, the opposing pitcher wasn’t going to be so gracious.  He pumped in the first strike (you start with a 1-1 count, for those unfamiliar with the game) followed by a ball.  The next pitch, however, was too close to take.  I swung – an all arms swing because I can’t put any torque on my knee – and lined it to right center.  At that moment, natural instinct took over.  I quickly turned in the box and attempted to take off running…*POP*…instant pain shot through my leg.  I uttered some unintelligible groan and delayed my recognition of the injury until I was able to hobble down to first.

I knew I was done for that game.  As soon as I heard the ump call time, I didn’t even try to signal for a pinch runner.  I just told their 1^st baseman, “I’m done”, and staggered off the field to the closest dugout, which belonged to the opponents.  I eventually made my way to a vacant table behind the field.  At this point, everything became a little too much for me.  I realized that I had probably made things much worse.  At the very least I had delayed my full return.  It also served as a reminder that I wasn’t all that close to returning anyway.  I slammed my batting gloves down and yelled an F-bomb at the top of my lungs.  I didn’t care who was going to hear it.  Naturally, this drew some raised eyebrows and concerned looks from everyone within earshot.  The courteous park director offered to get me some ice but everyone else stayed away from this crazy, swearing guy who had emerged.

Perhaps what finally pushed me to schedule that doctor visit was sitting on the bench watching my buddies play softball.  I don’t get overly amped up to play softball but the harsh truth of not being able to play makes me miss it even more.  Maybe I’ll stay away from the fields for most games to make it a little easier on myself, but does that make me a poor teammate?

So this injury is why I’m feeling so negative.  Forgive me in advance if I act a little ornery towards you.  This was supposed to be 'Summer of Dave'!  In addition to all of the missed softball games, I’ve had to turn down multiple requests to play golf or tennis.  I haven’t been able to bring myself to schedule another doctor appointment because I don’t want to admit what happened.  I’m not sure it’s needed either.  The knee still hurts but not really much worse than it did before the softball incident.   It’s just going to be a slow recovery I think.  I’ve already written off the entire softball season.  On the bright side, I can finish the season with a 1.000 batting average.  It looks like I’m going to have a lot of time to continue contributing to this blog.  Is my injury a sign from the universe?  OK, someone seriously needs to tell me to stop looking for them.

[UPDATE:  As everyone knows by now, the Blackhawks won Game 1 by a 4-3 score in a 3 OT thriller.  We were trying to listen to the game by streaming WGN radio through a mobile phone.  Unfortunately, there was the little matter of getting the generator to run so the basement wouldn’t flood and the food wouldn’t spoil.  The folks are on vacation in Italy so the duty fell to me and my brother.  Responsibility sucks, by the way.  So we didn’t get to hear, let alone watch, much of the game.  Approximately 15 minutes after the game ended, power was restored.  Of course.  Why wouldn’t it be?  Game 2 tonight.  GO HAWKS!]

The 30-35-40 Plan, Part 2

Ah, the much ballyhooed 30-35-40 plan. This plan was conceived roughly a decade ago when I was an impressionable young adult. Before we get any further, I would like to assure everybody that I’m not really terrible at math. 30-35-40 are not percentages that are supposed to add up to 100. They are ages, specifically ages at which I was going to stop and take inventory of my life. They are nice, round numbers that would be easy to remember. More importantly, they were far enough in the distance on the horizon that I didn’t have to think very much about what those ages should mean to me.

From a young age, we are trained that a house, wife, and kids are the American dream. I bought into that dream and very much planned to be living it someday.  The dream became the 30-35-40 plan: own a house by 30, get married by 35, and have kids by 40. I realize those are not overly ambitious goals; most people that plan on doing those things will do them well before the timeline I had laid out for myself. Like I said in Part 1, I don’t do things very quickly.

When I set these goals, I had no plans to intentionally wait until those ages before achieving them. If I found myself with a mortgage and wife while trying to stumble through the challenges of being a dad all before 30, that certainly would have been fine. Just so long as I had each of those things by the defined deadline, I would be a success. I figured that waiting on them would also help me get it right. I’d have a home worth calling a home, a wife who perfectly complemented me because she had passed every screening test I administered, and I’d be wise enough and mature enough to raise a kid.

So I traveled down the highway of life in my 20s with one eye to the future but no real consideration of the destinations I had mapped out. I should have realized that the objects in the mirror were closer than they appeared. I wasn’t exactly sure how life was going to sort itself out, but I was sure that it would. It always did. There were years of data to support this belief. For instance, the 5-page term paper due tomorrow that I had not started? Piece of cake. I’d crank out some pure gold in one night and get an A on it. The college degree that was seemingly going to take longer than 4 years to get because I had foolishly put all of my eggs in one basket, which ended up breaking? No worries. I’d just apply to a local school at the eleventh hour, get accepted (even be awarded a partial scholarship for my troubles), and graduate “on time”. Surprisingly, I’ve got a lot of confidence when it comes to certain things. The fallacy in this hubris is that houses and women aren’t something you usually fall ass-back into.

I still maintain that the plan itself was beautifully crafted even if the subsequent execution of it has gone awry. Deferring a home purchase until you are 30 enables a responsible individual to stash away money and accumulate enough for a sizable down payment. This will invariably improve your odds of getting a home you want and probably help your interest rate. If you are able to tolerate your folks and they’re nice people, they will let you live at home, perhaps even rent free. You may just need to help out a little more around the house. If you all get along, it’s often win-win. You live for basically nothing and they get free labor for tasks they would probably rather avoid in their advancing age.

If you’re in a serious relationship already, living at home doesn’t afford you the privacy you truly need. Moreover, if there are constant squabbles with your folks, then I also don’t blame you for wanting to get out. However, I don’t personally endorse living in an apartment for an extended period unless you plan on living in apartments the rest of your life. I can’t stand the thought of paying rent without building up any equity in return. You might as well be throwing money away. That rent money could be a larger down payment. Perhaps you don’t have the means to cover a mortgage by yourself just yet. Find someone you know and trust who doesn’t own a house and get them to “rent” from you by giving them an unused room in the house.

Once you acquire your own abode, you should try to live a few years on your own before you wed. Even if you’re in a relationship, you never know what the future holds. It’s important to prove to yourself that you can live on your own with that mortgage payment dangling above your head. More importantly, that house is your domain. Whether you are male or female, you’ve only got so much time before your significant other puts their literal or figurative fingerprints all over the house. Most guys are not civilized enough for a girl’s liking, and most girls will clutter a guy’s place with something like a few dozen throw pillows or other decorative pieces whose purpose cannot be fully explained.

People get married a lot later these days so I don’t think that 35 is too much of a stretch. I’ve considered putting in place an insurance plan for when 35 rolls around and I’m still a hopeless case. I thought about finding find someone I can tolerate who feels just as uncertain of their relationship future as I do. We would enter into a pact. If neither of us is married by the time we’re both 35, we would settle down together. Then I thought about it some more and decided that I’d rather be alone forever than in a convenient relationship where I have to limit my selfishness.

Once you’re ready to get married, there needs to be a few years of married life before you have kids. We all know that kids change everything. Take some time to enjoy yourselves as a married couple before you bring that extra responsibility into your lives. Do some of the things that you won’t be able to do so easily once you have kids. It always shocks me a little when young married couples in their early 20s decide to have kids. Those are some of the prime years of your life. There will be plenty of time to be a parent, so what’s the rush?

I will concede that the final leg of my plan is the one with the most question marks. 40 is pushing it to the limit for having kids. Studies have shown that women are exposed to greater fertility risks after 40. So maybe I just need to find someone much younger than me to marry then? Plus I wouldn’t want to stop at just one, so age becomes an even stronger factor. I firmly believe that each child should have at least one sibling growing up. You learn certain important dynamics about life with a sibling that cannot be replicated in a single-child home. If you live in a country setting, having a 2^nd kid is almost essential. That child NEEDS someone to play with, even if the siblings are boy and girl. If I had to pick a number for myself, I’d probably say 2 is a good number (3 at the most). It’s getting way too expensive to raise a kid these days.

Another problem with waiting to have kids is the obvious disconnect that could develop due to the disparity between our ages. If I wait until I’m 40 to have kids, I might be ready for retirement by the time he/she graduates high school. It would feel like there is a whole generation between us. I’m not very technically-savvy now, so I can only imagine how difficult it would be to relate with them. Perhaps the most important thing, especially if it’s a boy, is that it won’t be as easy for me to play sports with the child. I’ll do my best to take care of myself and remain in decent shape, but I probably won’t have the energy of a dad 10 years my junior.

I’ve spent a lot of time, like many I suppose, trying to figure what exactly it is that would make me a desirable attraction. I didn’t always think that owning a home preceded finding a woman. After college, with phase 1 of the 30-35-40 plan still a ways in the distance, I had convinced myself that the next step toward finding a woman was getting a job. No self-respecting woman would ever date anyone who was unemployed and I certainly didn’t want someone who couldn’t respect themselves.

There’s also the other obvious component of dating someone that a job can assist with – money. You need money to court someone and sustain a relationship. I’ve spoken ad nauseam in the past about how money is an unnecessary evil in the dating world, but I understand the game as it’s currently played. Truthfully, money has never been an issue for me. I don’t like to get into the habit of discussing my personal finances (although I’m always willing to give general money management advice), but let’s just say that I’m doing alright.

Since I’ve had “Job” crossed off the list for several years, I’ve now made up my mind that I need a house before I can seriously begin pursuing any more women. That goal beautifully aligns with the first limb of my 3-pronged, age-driven plan. Perhaps I should have made that a priority a lot sooner but accurately tagging the songs in my entire music library just seemed like more fun. Maybe I’ve matured, or maybe I’ve just latched onto something else that doesn’t seem attainable to use as an excuse for being single. I may have mentioned before that I did make an online dating profile. Even though I mentioned in my profile that I still live at home, there have been a couple women on the site that have “rated me highly”. I can only assume that they don’t understand the components of a basic rating scale. Or they were drunk. Either way, that’s not the kind of judgment I’m looking for in a potential partner.

So here we are. 30. The plan. Part of me believes I have already failed; I’m 30 and don’t own a house. The optimistic part of me suggests that I’m technically still 30. I said I needed to have a house by 30, so I guess that means I have until I turn 31, right? That’s all I’ve got left to push me forward so don’t take that shred of hope away from me. These next several months should be telling for my future. If I don’t reach the 1^stcheckpoint of 30-35-40, then there is really no point toward continuing down that path. You have to do the steps in order and I can’t afford to delay them any longer. I’ve pretty much already written off the 35-40 aspect of the plan. The only thing that keeps them lingering in the subconscious regions of my brain is that the 30 part of the plan is still obtainable. Maybe, just maybe, if I cross that first line, I’ll think I can cross the other ones in time too.

If I do not have a house by 30 31, then I have no choice but to consider the plan a failure and abandon it completely. There has been PLENTY of time for it to play out. It’s like those people you invite to after-work functions or summer parties that consistently never show up. Sometimes you just gotta know when to cut bait.  It’s entirely possible I am just not committed to the 30-35-40 plan any more.  I’ve grown accustomed to things the way they are.  Perhaps the pieces of this plan will be more trouble than they’re worth.  Simple math would seem to suggest so.

Abandoning the plan certainly does not mean my life has been a failure. As I mentioned at the end of Part 5 of my “Crushes” mini-series, we all have different destinations in life. If we’re lucky, we’re on the right path to reaching our destination. It will be time for me to realize that I should have passed the corner of “Real Life Drive” by now. I’ll pull off the road at the next gas station, locate a trusty map (I don’t have a phone with GPS, remember?), and plot out some new destination. It’s like I will be reborn with a whole new set of goals to fail at. How exciting! Don’t worry. I’ll devise another ill-conceived plan to reach them that I may share with you. I also promise I’ll come up with a better name for it next time.