How many of you have made a choice and almost immediately knew you’d made the wrong one? We’re not talking about ordering the chicken tenders when you really want a burger, but the life-altering-things-are-going-to-be-different-from-this-moment-on type of choice.
Those choices stick with you over the years.
I made the choice to leave Boston University for one simple reason, I was afraid. I was certain that if I stayed one more semester my girlfriend back home would decide she’d had enough of having me two states away and would show me the door before Martin Luthor King Day if I told her over Christmas break that I’d be returning to Commonwealth Ave. I was only nineteen years old and was absolutely certain that I’d never find another girlfriend again and the thought of a lifetime of loneliness was terrifying. I ended up transferring to the University of Maine and we stayed together for a few more years but in that time I know I blamed her for my return and for feeling like a failure. As almost anyone can tell you, harboring those thoughts in silence is incredibly unhealthy for a relationship, especially when you’re so damn young, so of course that relationship was doomed for inevitable failure.
It was easy to blame her for my return because at that point in my life I hadn’t really failed at anything. Sure, my high school baseball team absolutely sucked and I wasn’t voted Homecoming King, but overall I’d done well. The yearbook was littered with pictures of me on various sports teams, clubs, and winning awards. Of course, none of that meant fuck all when I went from a school with less than two hundred students to classes that had more than five hundred. If I’m going to be honest with myself, I was terrified at that school.
Past posts will tell you that I had some trouble acclimating to life on my own in the big city, but I was there for one main reason, to learn. I wasn’t accumulating debt to make friends, though I definitely created some credit card debt in having fun with them. (Seriously, what responsible institution gives an 18 year old a credit card, even if it does come with a meager limit?) I was there to become an engineer, work for NASA, and make busloads of money so that I could one day return triumphantly to my hometown and be recognized as a “big deal.”
This should’ve been the part I was able to handle. I was smart enough and given early acceptance to Boston University’s Aerospace Engineering program. Surely I must’ve been granted some gift in the brains department. And while I had the grades and the SAT scores to back that up, I was missing something that high school doesn’t always prepare you for…study habits and the desire to work hard. Academics came easy to me, and what I lacked in determination I made up for with an excellent ability to bullshit. I could get an A on a report for a book I didn’t read (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) by comparing it to Boyz in the Hood and the music of Public Enemy. (Sorry Mrs. Morey) I was able to overcome complete lack of preparedness with my gift of gab and sadly was rewarded for it numerous times, included at prestigious science symposiums where my project was obviously outclassed by two of my classmates (sorry Erika and Jill) because I could talk at length in front of large groups effortlessly.
But I couldn’t hide behind charm forever and it caught up with me that first semester of my freshman year, where my wiles had no effect on professors who couldn’t pick me out of a crowd. Years of doing just enough to get placed on the honor roll had left me behind my classmates, especially in mathematics, and while my grades were still “good enough” in those introductory classes I knew the piper would eventually come calling. Could I have just buckled down and studied my ass off until I was on the same level of my peers, foregoing nights in the city to sit at my desk studying equations until my eyes bled logarithms? Certainly, but I wasn’t going to do that.
To quote Dante, the main character in Kevin Smith’s film Clerks, “I can’t make changes like that in my life. If I could, I would, but I don’t have the ability to risk comfortable situations on the big money and fabulous prizes.”
So I left Boston University, started the Spring Semester at the University of Maine, and convinced myself that I did it all for the romantic notion of love, assured that I’d be happier closer to home and everything I’d grown up knowing. No regrets.
Self delusion is a powerful tool.
I regretted it the moment I was shown my “dorm room” in Androscoggin Hall the day I moved in. Because I was, to put it mildly, a late transfer, my choices of living arrangements were limited. To give the university credit they’d sold it to me as a private room. A more accurate description would’ve been an emptied storage room next to the elevator, and by next to the elevator I mean on the other side of a wall of cinder blocks which happened to be next to the only place I could fit a single bed. It was approximately six feet wide by ten feet long and immediately felt like a prison cell. I had one tiny window to allow myself to look upon the outside world, which in a Maine winter means you’re looking at snow. Also because of my new student status, I didn’t know a soul on my floor. Everyone was friendly, but upon meeting them their first question was always “I wonder what happened to so and so,” who had been the room’s previous occupant. My guess was he ran far from that room as soon as he was free.
I hated that living space and spending any time in it gave me fits of claustrophobia for the first time in my life, but I also discovered that I was incapable of studying in public spaces because I was too distracted by anything and everything. Again, no study habits.
That first month on campus was complete misery, but I wasn’t going to ever admit that moving back was a mistake. At least I could enjoy the bi-weekly visits that my girlfriend would make to campus along with the sleepovers that would accompany it. I found little joy in campus life. There was snow everywhere and nothing ever happened on campus other than the occasional frat party I had no interest in going to, or the weekly film viewing that the campus offered in the Student Union. Since the local movie theater was a fifteen minute drive away, and freshmen weren’t allowed cars on campus, I was stuck with whatever film choice the student association had decided to make.
I felt stuck in the situation that I had created, and couldn’t change because doing so would be an admittance that I had fucked up. I assumed that I’d just finish out the semester lonely and friendless and suffer a winter of discontent, coming out on the other side with some good written material should I ever take another creative writing class.
Then Kevin Smith saved me. Well Kevin and an old friend.
Believe it or not, in the days before social media you could live near someone you once knew and not really know it. But one day while walking to the student Union I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen since middle school. He grew up in a nearby town and when high school came around his parents had decided to send him to the nearby “Academy” school instead of our run of the mill high school. Since we were both athletes we’d see each other at games but since graduation we’d easily lost contact. It was mere luck and happenstance that we’d run into each other again.
His dorm wasn’t too far away, so it at least gave me another place to go when I wanted to hang out with someone, but I felt like an outsider there. He had friends, ones he’d been living with for months so I became the third, fifth or whatever wheel whenever there were group hangouts. In reality, this was unlikely the case, but in my pre-aware anxiety ridden brain I never felt welcome, but tolerated.
Most weekends were spent playing Mortal Kombat 2 or NHL ‘94 on my Sega Genesis (they did like that I owned one), while having a beer or two in their dorm rooms. It was enough to at least avoid some depression, but I did miss the movies. One particular weekend when nothing else was going on I managed to convince the group to go to the movies with me.
When they asked what was playing I simply said a really funny comedy that I had happened to catch while living in Boston and they needed to see it. I’m not sure if I’d needed to lie about seeing the film already, but “living in the city” was my one “cool” card to them so as soon as I said I’d seen it there they were on board.
Of course I hadn’t seen Clerks, only read the review in Entertainment Weekly. But this was my one chance to get “in” with these guys, so it needed to deliver the goods in order for me to keep my word.
To this day, I’m not sure if I’d ever laughed harder in a movie theater. From the opening fucked up clown cartoon to the ending scene, I was in literal danger of pissing my pants. At that point in my life I had yet to work a retail job, so while I could appreciate the jokes regarding customers I wouldn’t fully come to understand their inherent truth until years later. But not having experienced an angry mob throwing cigarettes and calling me a cancer merchant doesn’t make it any less funny.
Clerks was also the first movie that I’d seen to tell jokes about stuff I knew. Surely Jaws references had been in movies prior to this, but I’d also “swam” chips around a salsa bowl while humming the theme that everyone knows. And other than Spaceballs, I’d yet to see a movie that referenced Star Wars as much as Clerks did. Their expletive-laden discussion concerning stormtrooper versus outside contractors on board the Death Star was something I’d thought about too many times to be considered healthy. But here it was, up on the big screen, being talked about by two guys who I’d have loved to hang out with.
While the film might not have been a visual masterpiece, Kevin Smith deserves credit for making it look like somewhere we’d all been. Maine is loaded with places like the Quick Stop and the RST Video with their jam packed product shelves alternating with empty spaces. Seeing that portrayed made everything that was taking place, even the roof top hockey game and bathroom tryst, seem realistic despite the risque dialogue that was far too clever to be real. While people might not have always talked like that at the time, rest assured, they did after viewing the film.
Going into the movie I had one friend and three acquaintances. Afterwards I had four friends. All one of us had to do was yell out “37” and it would soon be followed by “in a row.” Frustrated with how your day is going? Say “I’m not even supposed to be here today,” and guarantee at least one person near you would chuckle and give a knowing nod. The film became shorthand for anyone frustrated by what life had thrown at you. It gave me a sense of normalcy, a group of friends for the semester, and for the time being gave me something to chuckle about.
At the beginning of this essay I asked if anyone had made a life altering choice that you absolutely knew was wrong. As hysterical as Clerks was, writer/director Kevin Smith was smart enough to give his movie a message to go along with laughs. While Dante and his best friend Randall undergo a series of quotable hijinx throughout the movie, the film essentially revolves around a choice that Dante needs to make. Choices don’t come easy, and for him, it means either continuing on with his current girlfriend Veronica, who loves him like crazy, encourages him to leave his dead end job, and enroll in school to better his life, or getting back with his ex-girlfriend Caitlin, who has constantly cheated on him and may or may not still be engaged to an Asian design major.
Hard work versus convenience.
Lets just say his dilemma cut a little too close to home, so much that I focused on the jokes more than Dante’s choices. I was a little jealous he had someone he could talk to about it, even if Randall didn’t always give the best advice. I had no Silent Bob (played by Smith) to offer me sage like wisdom. The options to reach out were certainly there, but to do so would be to admit defeat, that I might have made the wrong choice to return home and the thought of somehow reversing course seemed a more daunting challenge than I could take on. So in essence I took the path more easily travelled, and it certainly made a difference.
It took me years to be truly happy with where I was in life. For so many years the “what-ifs” lingered in the back of my mind and for a long time I felt trapped behind the counter of numerous Quick Stop stand ins. Looking back I wouldn’t necessarily change my course of action because I wouldn’t be where I am now without those missteps, and those choices have given me some wonderful life opportunities. But my advice to my younger self would be to make the difficult choice, to be a little braver, and to not let opportunities pass me by because I was too scared to do otherwise. It’s too easy to live a life with regrets and at some point you’re going to have to come to terms with the choices you’ve made and be wise enough to make better ones.
Dante made some bad choices causing him a lot of doubt and misery and it took a sequel to see him finally make a choice that he felt comfortable with (and that choice was aided by freaking Rosario Dawson). Don’t wait for your sequel. Take the chance now.
Brilliant piece, Dan. I can, unsurprisingly, relate. CLERKS is so good. The jokes and the audacity to “go there” lure you in, but it’s the relatability that makes it a lasting flick.
Agreed. Kevin Smith writes from the heart and dresses it up in dick and fart jokes.