by Wil Wheaton
When it was over, we drove back to La Crescenta in my slightly-better-than-Patrick-Stewart’s Honda Prelude, blasting New Order the whole way with the sunroof open and the windows down. I dropped Darin off at his house, and though I got back home around 3, I was so loaded with caffeine, sugar, and adrenaline that I didn’t fall asleep until the sun came up.
The movie was campy and not especially good, but that wasn’t the point. It was a shared experience, a place for misfits of all stripes to gather once a week and fly our Transylvanian freak flags. For the next two years, Darin and I led an ever-growing group of our friends to Rocky at least once a month, usually more, at the Rialto theater in South Pasadena. I haven’t been since 1991 or 1992, but those years—and the film itself—hold a very special place in my memory. I’m sure the jokes have changed, and I’m sure I’d feel like a stupid old man, but just once more, I’d like to go there at midnight some Saturday, and do the Time Warp again.
i am the modren man
My car’s fuel light was on, and though it probably had enough gas to get the kids to school and return me back home, I wasn’t about to risk calling a tow truck in my bathrobe and slippers somewhere in between, so I used Anne’s car. When I turned the key to start the engine, her XM radio sprang to life. It was tuned to the ’80s station.
Ryan hopped into the car a minute later. Even though I was seriously rocking out to NuShooz, he grabbed the radio and changed it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.
“Changing the radio station.” Translation: You are so lame. I rule because I am sixteen.
“Well, when you’re driving in your car, you can change the radio all you want. But when I’m driving, if you’d like to change the radio, please ask first.” Translation: I may be lame, but I’m still your parent.
I backed out of the driveway.
Ryan sighed and rolled his eyes. “May. I. Change. The. Station.” Translation: You are so lame. Now I will use the words you requested, but I will deliver them as sarcastically as possible. I rule because I am sixteen.
“No,” I said. “You may not.” I took a deep breath and sang, “Baby! Ah-ah-ah-can’t wait! Muh-nah-nah-nah-nah-bop-de-bop Muh-nah-bup-bop-be-bop!” Translation: I can be just as annoying to you as you are to me. Age and treachery will always triumph over youth and vigor. I rule because I am thirty-three.
From the back seat, Nolan said, “Wil, this is really horrible…‘radio.’ You will note I did not call it ‘music.’” Translation: I’m not going to join in the lameness this morning. Rather, I will make a joke to defuse the tension. I rule because…I just do.
“I know,” I said. “But now that I have the power of horrible ’80s pop music, there is nothing that can stop me.”
Ryan and Nolan both said, “What?” Translation: What?
Before I could dazzle them with another brilliant non sequitur, the opening strains of “Mr. Roboto” filled the car.
I stole a sideways glance at Ryan and caught him stealing a sideways glance at me.
“Is this ‘Mr. Roboto’?” he asked. Translation: Uh-oh. I love this song, and I know you’ve heard me listening to it in my bedroom. How am I going to maintain my carefully crafted façade of universal indifference?
“Yep,” I said. “You’re wondering who I am: machine or mannequin! With parts made in Japan, I am the modren man!”
“Did he just say ‘modren’?” Nolan asked. Translation: What the hell does modren mean? Can I say “hell” in my thoughts? I guess I can, since nobody can hear me. Hell hell hell. Hell damn hell. Damn damn crap. Crap damn damn hell crap—
“Indeed he did,” I said.
“What is ‘modren’?” he asked.
“It’s Dennis DeYoung’s concept-album version of ‘modern,’” I told him.
“Does this have something to do with mullets?”
“You know it.”
“Because the mullet was the official haircut of rock and roll in the ’80s,” Ryan said. “I remember.” Translation: I was paying attention to you that one time. But you’re still lame. Nothing personal.
I put on my best Dennis DeYoung voice and nudged the volume knob just a bit closer to eleven. “I’ve got a secret I’ve been hiding under my skin! My heart is human, my blood is boiling, my brain IBM!”
I glanced at Ryan again. His right leg was bouncing along with the music, and his head was bopping just a little bit. Translation: Must… maintain… carefully… crafted… cool… but… losing… battle… against… the… rock…
I pulled into a long line of cars and waited to make a left.
“Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo…domo.” I looked in the mirror at Nolan, who was struggling to suppress a smile.
“Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo…domo!” I looked at Ryan and pointedly turned up the volume again.
“Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo…domo!!” I pulled the middle and ring fingers of my right hand into my palm, and folded my thumb over them. The light changed, and we inched toward the intersection. I subtly rocked the goat back and forth, just at the wrist.
At the top of my lungs, I belted out, “THANK YOU VERY MUCH-OH, MR. ROBOTO, FOR DOING THE JOBS THAT NOBODY WANTS TO. AND THANK YOU VERY MUCH-OH, MR. ROBOTO, FOR HELPING ME ESCAPE JUST WHEN I NEEDED TO!” Ryan shook his head and began to smile.
“Thank you! Thank you, thank you! I want to thank you, please, thank you!” I sang, a bit of Shatner creeping into my Dennis DeYoung.
Ryan laughed. Translation: Okay, you’re still lame, and I’m still so cool because I’m sixteen, but we’ve got a long history together, and now that I realize you’re not buying into my bullshit—yeah, I said bullshit. What are you going to do about it?—I’m going to give it up and enjoy this. Because I am sixteen, not only do I rule, but I can completely change my attitude in a nanosecond.
Traffic grew heavier as we got closer to the school. I turned the radio down to a reasonable volume. Translation: I don’t need to embarrass you in front of your peers…this time.
“The time has come at last to throw away this mask, so everyone can see my true identity…” I sang.
Ryan joined me: “I’m Kilroy! Kilroy! Kilroy! Kilroy!” Translation: See? I may be totally cool because I’m sixteen, but I’m not totally lame, either. Remember, you must learn how to deal with me now, because my brain is all messed up. I’m not trying to be a jerk. Honest. I can’t help it sometimes.
“Who is Kilroy?” Nolan asked.
“I have no idea,” I said, as I pulled to the curb and they opened the doors. “But you can be sure he wore a mullet.”
They nodded at me and smiled. Sort of. Translation: Just nod, smile, and walk away.
“I love you guys,” I said. “Have a great day.” Translation: I love you guys. Have a great day.
“Okay,” they said. “We will.” Translation: We love you, too. Even though you’re totally lame.
I pulled away from the curb as Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home” began to play.
I sang, “You know I’m a dreamer, but my heart’s of gold…” No translation necessary.
My dad has a song for everything. When we were kids, and we were driving west near dusk at certain times of the year, he would look into the rearview mirror and say to my brother, sister and me, “Hey, what’s that up in the sky?”
He’d wait while we all tried our best not to answer, but one of us would eventually give in and say “It’s Venus!” He’d dramatically draw a deep breath and break into the classic Frankie Avalon song while we squealed in delight or mock embarrassment. Even though we’re all adults now, he still does it, and we still love it.
I didn’t realize it until we were putting The Happiest Days of Our Lives together, but I sing a lot of songs around my kids, and I have my father to thank for it.
suddenly it’s tomorrow
I’ve lived within five miles of the Rose Bowl for most of my life, and it’s played an important role in several milestones since I was a teenager. I learned how to
drive a manual transmission in parking lot K in 1989, and in 1990, I learned how to roller blade in the same place.
On June 8, 1988 it was the location of my first big concert: Depeche Mode’s Concert for the Masses, with Wire, OMD, and Thomas Dolby. When the show was over and 65,000 people poured out of the Rose Bowl, I couldn’t find my ride home. In the days before cell phones, this was kind of scary for a 15 year-old, but before I could panic, I was spotted by KROQ’s Richard Blade, who was one of the biggest DJs in Los Angeles alt.culture at the time. I knew Richard from hanging around the KROQ studio in Burbank, and he gave me a ride home. Whenever I go to the Rose Bowl now (which is quite frequent; it’s a wonderful place to jog and walk) I can’t help but revisit each of these memories when I walk past the places they were created.
The event I wrote about in this story was deeply personal for Anne and me, because too many of our friends have been hit with breast cancer. Happily for all of us, they are all survivors.
Thousands of people swarmed around the Rose Bowl, 1,500 of them ahead of us in the runners’ starting corral and another 5,000 or 6,000 in the walkers’ area beside us. The sun felt warm on my face, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake wearing my long-sleeved shirt.
I stood with my entire family as we prepared to run in the annual Susan G. Komen Foundation’s 5K Race for the Cure. Originally, it was just going to be Nolan and me, but Anne got interested, and then Ryan decided to round it out to a full-on family event. Anne’s friend Michelle joined, too, and so did our friend Amanda. Suddenly, without really trying, we were a team.
“Do I have to stay with you if you’re going too slow?” Nolan asked me.
I told him that he didn’t, and we all agreed to meet under the giant American Airlines balloon that was set up on the South Lawn when we were all finished. We stretched, did some ridiculous-looking jumping around to get the blood pumping, and waited for the race to start.
The gun went off, and the kids broke away from us after about six strides.
“Wow! Look at them go!” Amanda said.
“Yeah, I suspect we’ll be catching up with them around the second mile,” I said, as we passed a troupe of Japanese Taiko drummers. For reasons that I’ll never fully understand, Taiko has always inspired me at a cellular level. It’s like those rhythms get into my nanosoul, and I started out a little fast as a result. After about a quarter-mile, my Garmin Forerunner was chirping at me that I needed to slow down, and I’d pulled far away from Amanda, Anne, and Michelle. Still no sign of Nolan and Ryan, though.
I felt pretty good, considering that I hadn’t put my shoes on in over five weeks, no thanks to an incredibly annoying groin injury that showed up suddenly in December and sidelined me until the day before the race. I cruised along for the first mile, smiling at people, announcing “On your left!” and “Looking great!” to the little kids who were running with their parents. I felt good, emotionally and physically. I loved it that I was out here on a Sunday morning with thousands of people, and I loved it that I was in my first race of 2005.
I sent some mental probes along my body, to see how I was doing:
• Feet: Feeling great!
• Legs: A little tight, but warming up nicely.
• Back and shoulders: Five by five, captain.
• Cardiovascular system: If you don’t get faster than 9 minutes a mile, we’ll be just fine, sir.
• Right groin and hip area: Houston, we have a problem.
Oh, shit.
Truth be told, I shouldn’t have run, and I put myself right out of the San Diego marathon later that year by running through the pain, but I desperately needed to spend some time with my family. For months, I’d spent more time down at ACME working on sketch comedy shows than I spent at home. When I was home, I spent my time working so hard to meet my writing commitments, I hardly had any time to just sit and visit with Anne and the kids. I was constantly distracted by all my commitments and had to fight the urge to rewrite things in my head when I wasn’t sitting in my office, during time I’d planned to set aside for my family. I’d been redlining for weeks, and I was exhausted, creatively and otherwise. I vowed that, whenever I got a free moment, I would spend it with my family, but my free moments were few and far between.
So.
Just short of mile one, I felt the first twinge of pain in my right hip. “Look,” I told my body, “we’re just doing 5K, and our pace is 10 minutes per mile, so relax, okay?”
“Yeah, probably not,” my body said. Pain began to radiate around my hip and up my chest. Right around 1.3 miles I had to slow down, and at 1.5 miles the pain was so intense I had to walk.
Goddammit! For the first time since it happened two years before, I really felt like I was in my thirties. I mean, in my bones, in my heart, and especially in my muscles.
A cheerful voice behind me called out, “On your right!” A woman in her 60s wearing a pink “I’m a survivor” T-shirt jogged past me, putting everything into perspective.
“Doing great!” I said when she was ahead of me. She didn’t look back, but flashed an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
I walked quickly for a few minutes. When the pain began to subside, I tried jogging lightly. I went slowly but steadily, and caught up to Ryan near mile two.
“Hey! How are you feeling?” I asked him.
“My knees are killing me,” he said, “and Nolan ran faster than I’ve ever seen him run. He was all the way up in the front, where there were only ten or fifteen people, when I had to walk.”
“Well, you want to run with me?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ll see you at the finish.”
No way, kiddo. This is why I came out here today, I thought.
I slowed and walked with him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m walking with you!” I said.
“Oh. Cool,” he said. He was so fifteen that I couldn’t tell if “cool” meant “cool” or “you’re so lame, Wil,” but I was happy to walk with him.
We moved slowly through a few other walkers. A man jogged past us, pushing his 3- or 4-year-old daughter in a jogging stroller.
“We’re doing great, Daddy!” she said with a huge smile.
“We…sure…are…honey,” he said. He was not smiling.
Right around mile 1.9, Amanda caught up to us.
“Hey, I know you!” Ryan said.
“How are you guys doing?” she asked. She was training for the L.A. Marathon, so this was nothing to her.
“My stupid hip is giving me a really bad time, but other than that I’m fine,” I said.
Ryan told her about his knees, and we did a little speed-walking for a few minutes, until I saw the water station for mile two at the crest of a little hill.
“I’m going to run the last mile,” I said. “I’ll either see you guys at the finish or you’ll step over my body in about 3,000 feet.”
They wished me well, and I began to jog. I extended my arm—just like a real runner—as I passed through the water station. A smiling middle-schooler pushed a Dixie cup into my hand and said, “Great job!”
“Thank you!” I said as I dumped the water over my face and head. I was on the western side of the Rose Bowl now, heading south. The sun was in my face, and I began to regret wearing my long-sleeved shirt.
The Rose Bowl has been involved in several landmark moments in my life, most of them when I was a teenager living in La Crescenta: When I was fourteen, I attended the Depeche Mode Concert for the Masses there. When I was fifteen, my best friend Darin taught me how to drive a stick shift in his VW Bug…right in the parking lot that was now on my left. My hip was on fire, and I was beginning to feel dangerously warm in my long sleeves, but I smiled. This is a great way to spend a Sunday morning, I thought.
When I rounded the penultimate corner in the race, I was breathing hard. The sun was beating down on me through a magnifying glass, in classic Warner Brothers cartoon-style, and I pushed my sleeves up as far as they coul
d go. I sprayed the remainder of my water over my face and immediately felt better. I turned north and checked my Forerunner: I had less than a quarter of a mile to go. Surprisingly, the pain in my hip, groin, and ribs wasn’t that bad. Maybe it had just been masked by adrenaline so I could finish, but I’ve learned that there are times when you just don’t ask questions. I was in the final 1,000 meters! Music and cheering filled the air.
I set my eyes on the finish line, and the noise of the crowd faded away. Pretty soon, all I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears and the pounding of my feet on the pavement. With about thirty yards to go, I heard a familiar voice calling out, “Go Wil! You’re almost there! Go! Go! Go!”
I blinked my eyes and looked off to my right. There was Nolan, grinning broadly and jumping up and down. It was pure, concentrated mojo. I raised one of my hands up and made it into a fist. I pumped it in the air at him.
“Yeah! Go Wil! Go Wil!” he cheered. My heart swelled, and I finished the race running on air.
I crossed the finish line and got my time: 34 minutes. Not bad, all things considered. My body ached, my throat was dry, and my heart pounded fiercely in my chest. My 3.1 miles felt more like a marathon, which was a sad commentary on my current level of physical fitness, but I did it! I ran slower than my marathon training pace, but I did it! I needed to spend some time building memories with my family, and I did it!
When I got off the course, I collapsed into the grass and caught my breath. After a few minutes, I stretched. The pain in my hip was slowly coming back, but Nolan’s cheering echoed in my head, and there wasn’t any pain at all strong enough to break through that wall of joy.
Eventually, I made my way over to our meeting place. Ten minutes or so later, Ryan and Amanda came over.
“What was your time?” I asked them.
“Thirty-six,” Ryan said. “What was yours?”
