In life, you will always have enemies, and you will always have friends. Many friends and fewer enemies is always good but a few good friends compared to many enemies is better.

It is easy to get frustrated and upset but better to understand.

Many people hate others because of the way they make an impression upon them. Try to let an individual make their own impression upon you over time instead of the impression you get when first looking at them.

When the chance to do something good arises take the chance and do it.

Talking to rude and self-centered people just makes you mad.

Don’t yell unless someone is deaf or can’t hear you.

If you don’t like something, say something about it. If you don’t say something then nothing can be done about it.

There aren’t very many people you can trust, be careful who you trust in.

 

Bright lights are bad. They are hard on your eyes and take away the beauty of things.

People are born selfish. People grow up to be selfish. Some LEARN not to be selfish. And many of those who learned not to be selfish went back into the habit.

There are no ugly loves. That means that if you really love somebody then you won’t be able to find anything about them that you find ugly.

Hate is so easy to come by because there are so many things out there that people do to piss you off. It looks as if they do it on purpose because they are too lazy to do things themselves.

If you have an idea or an opinion about something write it down but write it so others can understand your idea if in case you pass away before being given the chance to present it to them.

Nothing can exist before it exists

Only I can change my future

Nothing can exist if it can’t exist.

Sex is the most overrated and yet underrated activity you can participate in.

Intelligence is the best and worst thing that ever happened.

Those in love are the happiest and saddest individuals.

Love will always affect your freedom.

Thinking too much makes you sad but wiser.

Luxury destroys the satisfaction received from simpler things.

The simplest things are the most interesting and enjoyable, but at the same time overlooked, things.

To live simply is to live happily.

Love brings pain, but the satisfaction that comes with it makes one forget the pain. Is that good?

The times of pain from Love outnumber the times of satisfaction, but the satisfaction outweighs the pain.

 

Matt and I joked about it being the head of some woman or an unfortunate child for they had been found in the canal in the past.

Later that day after Matt went home I was getting bored and with nothing to do I decided to venture back to the canal.

I did.

I grabbed my board and skated down to the canal.

I climbed down to my usual smoke stop halfway down the side and lit up. I was looking at everything. People jogging by. The ducks. Water. Black Plastic Bag.

“What the HELL is in that DAMN thing?” I said to myself.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Curiosity got the best of me so I put out my cigarette and climbed up the other side of the canal. I wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks because I was walking around in the shallower parts of the canal’s water and my feet hurt from climbing the sides. I carefully walked down to the spot where the bag was and carefully surveyed the situation. There was only one way to get the bag and only get your feet wet, and that was to cautiously make your way down the side, grab the bag and even more cautiously go back up.

Easier said than done.

Just recently, about a week before this adventure, the dirt walls of the canal had been smoothed by a machine with a gigantic arm that stretched out to about fifty feet long. At the end of this arm was a hand like block that, when it was rubbed up and down the sides, knocked off protruding rocks and dirt. So in other words they “cleaned up” the sides of the canal by making them smooth.

They were smooth, real smooth.

I knew it too. I knew what risk I was taking by going down the side. I knew that if I slipped that I would get soaking wet and filthy. I knew if I came home wet and filthy that my dad would kill me. I knew all those things and yet I still took the risk and went into the canal.

It may not seem like much now but those were big things to a kid like me.

I used my heel to dig little steps or holes in the side of the canal as I went down. It was easy, all you had to do was pound the soft, loose, dirt with your heel until it made a little step hard enough to support you.

It was the first time I had done anything like that. I’d never made steps or dug with my heels. I never climbed barefoot into a canal to look at a black garbage bag. It was all new to me so I was learning.

I was about halfway down when the soil got real hard and I was unable to make more “steps”. I proceeded to go back up the side, using my “steps”, backwards.

Apparently I hadn’t made the “steps” well enough because they were falling apart or weren’t even steps at all. They kept coming apart. Falling apart. I was sliding down the side towards the water. I couldn’t stop. Soon enough I was frantically clawing the sides with my hands trying to find some handhold that would stop me. I was getting closer and closer to the water. I was almost there. As a last minute desperation I tried a jumping /running kind of motion.

It didn’t work.

I was in the canal and I was waist deep in filthy freezing water and something was giving off a hell of a stench. I was pissed and I was wet. I was wet and I was pissed. I was pissed, wet, in a canal and the sun was going down. In other words I was gonna freeze if I didn’t get out.

The bag.

Oh yeah! The bag. It was about a foot away begging for me to open it and look inside. I grabbed the bag and ripped a hole in it.

What’s this?

Another bag?

Oh Fudge.

I ripped open the next bag and the next bag and the next bag. I realized by then that something either very important, or very disgusting, was in those bags and that who ever put it in there didn’t want anybody to see it.

That hell of a stench had increased.

Hmmm.

I ripped open another layer of bags and by God the stench was coming from the bag! IT was IMPORTANT! I had to get that bag onto some dry ground before it was opened all the way.

I remembered Matt and I’s joke earlier about it possibly being a woman’s head.

I prayed to Allah, God and Jehovah that it wouldn’t be a head, or any body part for that matter.

Up until this point I had forgotten about my wallet and the pack of cigarettes in my pocket. I quickly pulled them out. Whew, lucky me, only the filter’s had gotten wet. I held the pack in my mouth, the bag in one hand and my wallet in the other. I slowly but surely made my way back to the only place where anybody could get out of the canal with a heavy, plastic bag in their hands. My smoke stop.

It was getting dark. The sun only had a bit more to go before it was gone and the streetlights were coming on. Night bugs and water bugs were flying everywhere. It felt humid. Maybe because of the heat produced by my exertion plus the dampness of my clothes. My feet were sinking into the mud and silt on the bottom about a foot each step. It was difficult, very difficult. I was going about 5 to 8 feet per minute and I still had about 45 yards to go before I even could think about getting out.

It was real dangerous walking in the canal water because people would throw glass, metal and other sharp and possibly infected items in the canal. It was even more dangerous for me because I was barefoot. I was still curious about what was in the bag but as time passed it turned into a fear of knowing what was in it. What if it was a head or another part of someone’s body? What if it was a head and a bunch of chopped up body parts? I mean, people are reported missing every day, some of them turn up in the canal.

After what seemed like an eternity I finally made it to the spot where I could get out. My shoes and socks were there so was the skateboard I used to get to the canal on. I put on my socks, then my shoes, grabbed my board, climbed out, set down my board and climbed back in for the bag. I carefully pulled the bag out and brought it under the nearest streetlight so I could see what I was doing.

I counted how many layers of bags I had ripped open. I had opened four. I continued to open the rest. I ripped and ripped. I went through twelve layers of black plastic and another one remained. It was cold and so was I. My nose was cold and running so I sniffed and the smell. Oh the smell! That rotten flesh, putrid kind of smell. It was bad. Real bad. The smell was so bad I almost puked. I’ve only puked twice in my entire life. That bag nearly made it three.

I held my breath as I opened the next layer of plastic. I let it out in a real quick cough when I saw what was in there. I had opened thirteen layers of black plastic bag and I had come to a clear plastic layer through which I could see what was inside.

The lighting wasn’t all that great and all I could tell was that whatever was inside stunk and was white. A head perhaps? Maybe a body part? I hoped not.

I poked the bag and made contact with what was inside through that last layer. It was hard, like a rock, a stone, a bone, a skull. Oh God don’t let it be a skull! I pushed the plastic onto the object and what I saw scared the living shit out of me. It wasn’t an eye, a nose or any other recognizable body part. It was:

Hair.

Thick, blondish-white hair. I thought I was going to die. I jumped up, grabbed my board and skated as hard and as fast as I could home.

On the way from the canal to my house was a big rocky patch in the sidewalk that I hadn’t been able to jump over, with my board, and land on the other side still in motion before. That night I did. I finally did. I cleared the damn thing with a foot to spare. I was excited, but crazed too.

It seemed like it took forever to get home but I finally made it. I grabbed my dad, told him to get in the car, took a flashlight and hopped in. We went to the canal. I showed him the bag. He could smell the stench too. He didn’t want to open it up and neither did I anymore. So, he called the police on his cellular, told them what I found and how it was probably something dead.

You know what they told him?

“Call Dead Animal Pick-Up, it’s probably a dog or cat.”.

To this day I still do not know what was in that cursed bag and even though I wanted to once, I don’t want to know what was in that bag anymore. Last time I checked the bag was still there. Nobody touched it. It wasn’t moved. But it still stunk to high heaven.

Like I said:”Curiosity killed the cat.”.

It didn’t kill me, but it did manage to scare the pants off me.

 

I called her that day and broke up with her. She turned suicidal and said that she felt like putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger. I told her that if she is going to do that then she should do it where I can’t and won’t hear it. That cured her of her suicidalness and a week later she was back to normal.

 

I remember one day we were seeing how far down the side we could climb and Tom went down pretty far after me. started to climb up and Tom couldn’t because he weighed a little more and the side started to give way. had to help him out and he started to climb past me. He got out of the canal when was just ten feet from the top when all of a sudden, AHHHH!!!!! I slipped. I was holding on by a mere clump of grass barely rooted to the ground. I couldn’t get a foot hold because I was panicking. I was yelling

“TOM,TOM HELP ME! I DON’T WANNA DIE!!!” Tom reached down, grabbed me by the hand and helped me get a grip.

It’s kinda funny now that I think about it.

I smoked my first cigarette at the canal. Tom and I had gotten our hands on a pack of cigarette’s somehow and decided to see what it was all about. It was New Year’s Eve 1993 I was 13 and Tom might’ve been 12. We snuck out of the house that night and went to go bang pots and pans in the street. We ran up one street banging pots and down the other banging pans. It was fun, I miss those days. We stopped to light firecrackers and also decided to light cigarette’s. We didn’t know what the big deal was about them. They smelled bad. They tasted bad. What was the big deal?

I found out about nine months later when I moved to Reno which is the place where I started smoking. In Reno, there was nothing to do except for sex, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and gambling. Ooh La La.