Back Before I Was by Gary Glauber

Back Before I Was

My parents never had kids.
But here I am, a miracle of sorts,
proving everything wrong. Again.
They were young, so young.
Younger than daylight and
totally not up to tasks at hand.
My father hid from war
with a heart disease that
made him timid, not heroic.
Yet he somehow fostered a belief
that he could have been a
starting pitcher for the Cardinals.
My mom was a left-handed woman
plucked from her independence
to a life of artistic pursuits and
cigarettes smoked while speaking French.
It was an eclectic home life.
They were constantly at odds.
Neither had much in the way
of self-confidence and swagger.
Every year was a new experiment.
I lacked a functional mentor.
Even my school guidance counselor
refused to guide me, particularly after
an errant home run of mine accidentally
broke her living room window.
Yet I managed to machete my way
through the jungle morass
toward a path of growth and vision.
Nah, just kidding. I was a hot mess.
I fainted while wearing a lobster bib.
Calculus threw me for a loop.
And even though I had super
impressive quadriceps, it did not
help my football skills in the least.
No one cared that I could use my legs
to lift all that weight – it served no
practical purpose whatsoever.
So I grew the best set of mutated sideburns
a young teen could manage
and joined a band. No one liked
the love song about the Vietnam vet.
Still, I played on.
Went to football camp, where
I honed my standup comedy skills.
I learned that a lifetime
of good stories was helpful
in rationalizing a string of poor crushes
that never worked out well.
I was hopelessly romantic
in a time of more practical ways,
too young for the war
and for Woodstock too,
but at least I had the watch.
And boy did time fly.
Went off to a college
also ill-suited for me,
an engineer’s school
for those rejected
by the Ivies.
I managed a hairline
fracture of my ankle.
While in my cast,
I tried out for the play.
Then I was in two casts.
I played a character
with a limp. Badly.
But it was Shakespeare,
so no one noticed.
I read lots of books
and came home every
weekend to head out
to comedy clubs.
I was not the picture
of happiness,
but who was back then?
Besides, I could grow
decent facial hair,
and that counted for something.
I vowed to spend the next year
away from myself, far far away.
And I did. But I’ll never
forget my humble beginnings
becoming a person
in spite of strong odds against me.

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Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He has five collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit), A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing) and most recently, Inside Outrage (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), an Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur finalist. He also has two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize.