From Alex P. Keaton to Noam Chomsky in 10 Years

I believe that my very first crush in my adolescent life was Alex P. Keaton. I would sit every night I could and watch him and learn. It was because of him I decided that I wanted to grow up and become a wealthy business man. His clarity and take on the world seemed to make so much sense to me, and he wasn’t bad to look at either.

Even after the show left the air, I would try and catch it as much as I could, in syndication and on late night television. After leaving high school, I spent a summer in Grand Junction, CO. Over the course of those three months, I started to come into my own. I was staying with my father and stepmother, but I had already begun to really express myself. I lost a lot of weight, stopped eating meat and began to ride my bicycle everywhere. I actually did have a car, it was just in disrepair (a common theme in my life since then because I can’t just “buy a damn Chevy” and be happy) and so my only source of transportation was my bicycle.

In August, my Stepmother drove me to Fort Collins, CO where I moved into a single suite in the dormitories and began my freshman year of college. I was fortunate to not have to live with a roommate, of course I am quite sure that it had something to do with me asking “Do you have a gay dorm?” and it still doesn’t make sense to me why they put me in the football dorm, but I digress.

My first year at college was not an overwhelming success. I didn’t really study or try all that hard and I still managed to pull off better than a 3.0 GPA. I interviewed to be a RA and was offered a job as RA in the adult education dorm. At 19 years old, I would be managing people who would be in some cases 10 years older than me.

In that one year in college I felt my mind and soul awakening to a new life. I was outside of Alaska, and on my own. I no longer had any one else to officially account to and while I had always had my independence as a child, now I was truly free to express it. In hindsight, I wish I had a little more control thrust upon me as a child, but there is nothing I can do about that.

I joined several political and social groups on campus and before long, I was know by just about every Republican on campus. I was on my way to having the best college experience any person could hope for. Then, summer came. I went to the mountains and found a good job in Aspen. A lot of things happened that summer, nothing too significant, but a lot of smaller events that eventually lead to me not returning to school in the fall. That is the only decision I have ever made in my life that I have come even close to regretting.

Over the course of the next several years, I suffered through my dark years. I had forgotten how to think and create. I couldn’t even write simple poetry. Within a year, my creativity and drive for knowledge shriveled up, receded back to the corners of my mind and I forgot the high I got from learning.
Then, a couple of years ago, something happened. My desire to learn and create could no longer survive in the dark. Like an old sleeping vampire, a simple drop of blood revived the hunger. I realized that I had taken a vacation from reality and I had to go back. In any way I could.

As I sit here in the computer lab, on a Mac, listening to Cabaret Diosa and thinking of Joy, I realize that in a way, I have made full circle in my life. In fact, a full 10 year cycle. I am finally awake again and once again back on a path.

I caught a few minutes of Alex P. Keaton the other day. I don’t think in my youth I realized what it meant for Alex P. Keaton to be a republican or what his politics meant. I do now. Needless to say, I did not follow in the footsteps of Alex P. Keaton. I have instead chosen a different path: one slightly socialist, environmentalist, anti-corporatist and gay. You know, more like, Noam Chomsky.