A Place You Stay Forever : Chapter 1 Dead On Arrival

Jack Ryan.

Maybe getting off the bus and calling myself Jack would change my luck in life.

With word infused mouse clicking on Lunyr during my bus ride , I discover a man named Jack Ryan invented the Barbie.

Could I call myself Mr. Jack Ryan knowing I might be outed one evening by some hick pop culture guru during an inevitable small town new face coffee house inquisition ?

Would they always ask me in possible small talk situations , if I knew I had the same name as the man who invented the best selling doll in history.

With me answering every time "Yes"

" Of course "

Would that legitimatise my new self chosen future name tag.

Entering middle age I had never been addressed regularly by the name written on my birth certificate . Only my Mother would call me Salvador continually through out my life .

I've always been called Sal or when I was a child, Mr Seimors son . At one time while playing basket -ball competitively in high school my teammates gave me the nick name Sally long legs.

In retrospected it must of infuriated my Father every time he heard Mr Seimors son had won another sports award.

Dad was a huge nerd . He was picture perfect in the role of how a geek should look in real life.

lol

Short and skinny with thick glasses accompanied by the customary flimsy throwing arm while we played catch in my early childhood.

His laugh even had a trickle of snorting when he was genuinely amused. I remember I always found it was easy to make him laugh. I recall he seemed to always be smiling .

This is the image I see every time when I close my eyes and imagine Dad in my mind . There have been moments through out the passing decades in my life when I still require the need to feel him close to me.

They are endearing visuals . Dad died much too young in life. I wish he saw how I grew up to be a man more brain then brawn

Because he loved my Mom so much he was able to over look the fact that his only son was not from his genetic elk .

Edison Seimors was a research scientist for a major pharmaceutical company. At the age of 42 he was found dead in his office after suffering a massive heart attack.

Mother eventually sold the family house with the backyard a year after he passed. I spent my entire teenage life living 35 stories up in the sky. I rarely seen Mother during those adolescent years .

I had never lived in a city with a population less then 1 million people.

40,000 citizens would surly have a more sturdy group of familiar faces passing my path regularly.

I have been on vacation to small town resorts and am obviously well aware that there is a small town sidewalk politeness . Greeting passerby's with verbal pleasantries or eye smiling head nods is a nice awkwardness I could learn to adapt too.

Will I be require to introduce myself and make small talk if I develop a similar early morning routine as local neighbour ?

So much anticipation for unknown events in this new chapter I was beginning in my life.

As the bus pulled off the Highway and turned down an Avenue filled with all the familiar fast food franchises, lit up in their regular neon shades , I notice how the mountains hugged the entire area , protecting the residents with massive vertical slopes and jagged clay cliffs.

When I stepped off the bus I went directly into the station to wash my face and brush my teeth.

I had to produce a receipt of my bus ticket to obtain the key to enter the washroom. As I put the key in and turned the knob I could already smell the urine emitting from the other side of the door.

For town with a picturesque post card setting the putrid smell was odd combination.

When I gazed at the shit smeared words on the wall , the look on my face in the mirror on the opposite wall was jaw dropping .

" I will kill all the Penticton Witches"