The Secret Shame of My Youth

I am getting older. It was inevitable because the passage of time is just as inevitable. But as I get older, I look back on my youth with mostly good feelings and nostalgia. I had a great childhood overall, with caring parents, thoughtful friends, a strong education, and an overall enjoyable experience. I wasn't perfect. I made mistake, like any other kid. But I was generally a good, obedient, happy kid.

But, behind that membrane of normality rested something much, much darker. I am hiding something...terrible. Whenever a memory of that much more horrible place and time would begin to surface within me (often times as I lay awake in the middle of the night), I would push it down -- push it down as deep as it would go and hope that memory would never come back. But it always did. And now, that memory is coming back in great frequency and with much more force.

The continued recollection of this dark time in my past has reached the breaking point. It is now affecting my day-to-day ability to live my life as whenever I even close my eyes, I see what I did. I can no longer hide from who I truly am and what I did because, well, I can't let myself. Eventually, if I don't come clean, the darkness will overcome and I don't know what will happen then. I don't want to find out.

So I am going to reveal my deep dark secret and I'm going to reveal it to the world. Maybe something like this would be better disclosed to a therapist or someone with similar professional standing, but I don't deserve the benefit of discretion. My crimes are what they are, and I'm ready to face the consequences of my actions.

Before I reveal my secret, though, I must point out two facts about my childhood that are important to the overall context of what I will disclose. The first is something so innocent, that it makes what came soon after seem all the more horrible. That first fact is that, as a boy, I loved baseball. I still do. I live a mere three blocks away from Wrigley Field. I love the sound of the crack of the bat after a hard line drive and the smell of the grass on a hot July day such as this.

I played little league, sure, but I was never good enough to really make anything of myself. I had dreams of greatness, though, and even though I was well-aware I would never see them in a physical sense, I knew with technology I could always recreate them through the world of video games. So with my Nintendo 64 and my copy of "Ken Griffey Jr.'s Slugfest," I was able to live the life of a Major Leaguer without the actual talent needed to truly live said life. I was able to hit the home runs. I was able to win the World Series. It was foolish, sure, but it was nice, too. Real nice. Like baseball should be.

The second piece of context information that needs to be addressed relates to another part of our good All-American culture that could also be considered innocent: music. But the type of music I am referring to is anything but innocent. I am referring to the band, KoRn.

Now, I am far from proud of the fact that in the late 1990s, I enjoyed the music of the nu-metal quartet from Bakersfield, CA, but it isn't something that brings me the great shame that I feel. I blame my love of KoRn on the folly of youth. I am sure there are some musicians you yourself wish you could disassociate your fandom from. But, we all grow and out tastes change and those somewhat embarrassing preferences of our younger years are meant to be laughed at, nothing more. And if it wasn't for KoRn's connection to the overall story I am telling, I might laugh, too. Hell, sometimes I do laugh. It's all so horrible, sometimes that's all you can do.

I don't know why the heavy guitars and macabre lyrics of KoRn spoke to me. In fact, I don't know if it ever really did. The truth is, I had many friends who were into the band and I tend to think that was the catalyst that got me into them in the first place. But that's not to say I am free of blame and that I didn't enjoy their music. I did. I could listen back on tracks like "Freak on a Leash" now and struggle not to turn it off, but back then, it made me happy. If I could speak to my 14-year-old self now, I would ask him why, why listen to KoRn? But I don't know if I'd believe his response anyway.

So how does this all relate to the shame of my youth that I refer to in the title of this piece? Well, to jump back to "Ken Griffey Jr.'s Slugfest," there was a feature called "Create-a-Player." It allowed you to do just that, create a player. You could design how he looks, provide him with attributes affecting his power, speed,etc. And you could name him whatever you want.

I assume most kids would create themselves. Or maybe create a player that hadn't yet been on a major league roster at the time of the game's creation. Or who knows? Most kids would have just had fun with this feature. Most kids.

(And the saddest thing of this whole horrible event is that, I probably did have fun when I did what I did. And that's what makes me feel the most guilty. I probably had the time of my life.)

I created a player in "Slugfest" that I would guarantee nobody else in the world created. I created a player so astoundingly...off...that I expect nobody out there will look at me the same after reading about it shortly. And I won't blame them, because there are times when I can't even look at myself in the mirror. When you can't make eye contact with yourself, what else do you have?

But I've put this off long enough. The player I created was based on the bassist from KoRn, known as Fieldy.



Fieldy's real name is Reginald Arvizu, but I didn't know that at the time. All I knew was he was a short, stocky, dread-locked man with an affinity for headbands. And so I made him into a power-hitting first baseman on my "Slugfest" team. Since I didn't know his real name, I put his first name as "Fieldy" and his last name as "OfKorn."

And, Fieldy OfKorn was good. He was really good. You could easily compare him to a Prince Fielder type player today: patient enough to take his walks but with enough power to put the fear of God into opposing pitchers. Sure, he never had any speed, but Fieldy OfKorn was a rock in the middle of my lineup. And I used him over the course of an entire season. And with Fieldy, I won it all. I won the whole damned 'ship.

You don't get a physical trophy when you win a digital World Series; I don't even own that system or game any more, so I couldn't even see the pixelated representation of the trophy if I wanted to. All I have are the memories. And the knowledge that I won with a played based on the bassist for a nu-metal band.

Of course his statistical prowess brings me no solitude because he should never have existed in the first place. You probably ask, what possessed me to create such a monster? I have no answer. Even if I had one, it wouldn't be a feasible one.

I expect no pity from you. In fact, I'd be offended if you gave me any. I deserve no pity, only shameful, sideways glances. I can't imagine any of my friends will remain so after they read this and I will likely lose my job as well. If this revelation means that I'm now meant to drift the earth, barely scraping by to survive, then it is what I am meant to do. By keeping this secret so long, I only delayed the inevitable hardships that will soon follow.

If I can leave you with anything from this horrible tale other than the intense depression you must be going through after reading it, I ask you to think before you act. I didn't once when I was a child. And now I am nothing more than a shell of a human being.

But not unlike the bullet in the famous KoRn video, "Freak on a Leash," coming clean to you will not slow down my sadness. It continues on.

Unabated.

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