I miss western black people (American / European *). Almost the only black people I see here are these guys from Africa who are somehow brought here from various African nations (by their fellows! Not a national conspiracy!) to walk around selling illegal dvds. The one guy I've been able to get to know is from Nigeria. He won't really tell me much about the setup, but I know that he has to pay the people who brought him for a) the trip here, b) food,lodging, whatever, c) protection/bail. He wanted to make a lot of money to send to his family; now all he wants is to be able to get back. It sucks.

(also, of course, he might be lying about some things... but I don't have money, so, if so, it's a wasted effort.)

* please note, this about what we miss; I'd love to know nonwestern black people, too... But also I'd prefer if they weren't in some sort of slave labor situation.

Mate, I gotta Harold Holt, but I reckon I'll be back tomorrow arvo. She'll be apples.

I don't talk like that, much, normally. However I do know some people informally dedicated to keeping Strine alive. We're a bit like the "books" in Farenheit 451. My term is "grouse" and I should use it more often.

If you've become ruthless, then I have missed a lot. And I've missed a lot and miss a lot, but I'm having more of a problem being too full, of bale and pity and such.

Yeah, I miss my African friend Martin Kamya, back from a college I attended ages ago, Martin with his British/African accent who pronounced my name "Chen" until one person asked me if I was Chinese (producing a strange look from me who is very redheaded gwai-lo), easy going Martin who constantly listened to reggae on a pair of headphones and once beat me at Scrabble by a huge score despite me being a writing tutor and he having English as a second language...

I miss Omar from Panama who sat in a bar with me and watched his country being invaded on TV with the pretext of putting away Manuel Noriega, who was pretty much CIA anyway...

I even miss crazy Nizar from Tunisia who stole someone's identity, who blatantly hit on a woman he didn't know was a lesbian feminist in a bar and, when she said, "Geez, why don't you just whip it out and show it to me," actually DID whip it out, macho manic Nizar who wore tiger-striped wife-beaters and once thought he could start a troupe of male strippers called "the Naughty Boyz"...

It sucks living here in the Midwest.

[GeckoDundee: Heh! Thanks.]

I hate to be mundane, but I have to say, I miss the days of my life when I was making 120 bucks a week and felt like a rich man. I was the one buying beer, and telling everyone not to worry, I was the guy with the cash for now, etc.

Needless to say, I am making a little more than that now, and money's too tight!

I miss being able to do what I want, when I want, without even the barest level of responsibility. I miss waking up on a floor surrounded by a bunch of dirty kids that I met the night before, cracking open the first breakfast 40 of the day, drinking it while listening to Fifteen and figuring out which dumpsters I should hit that night. I miss being an angry kid who could go out every night and get drunk with other angry kids while we stood in crowded basements and screamed along with the angry bands that were screaming for us and laughed and fucked and didn't give a shit about anything else. I miss the excitement of new tattoos and the promise of escape, even temporary, that they held. I miss feeling like I could be someone new, without my brain chemical imbalances and self-esteem problems. One more tattoo would totally make me hot enough for me to be satisfied with how I looked, hot enough for someone else to actually care about me.

I miss having the firm belief that life was shit but I could make it less so. I miss hearing freight train whistles that sang out freedom and yelling "hey, let's go have adventures" to girls I barely knew, running towards trains without bags or any clue where that train was going, just safe in the knowledge that regardless of where it went, it went would be something new to see and new people to make out with and fall in love over and, later on, hug after months of separation.

I miss not feeling old and tired and worn out and *shudder* adult. But here I am, with my shiny middle class job and my bedtime at 10. I deeply miss having the optimism that I could set a different course for myself, saying "steer us a little starboard, mate, we have new islands to discover".

I miss being completely gaga over someone.

that was pure poetry, cmonkey, and i bet we all feel a little that way...

I miss the freedom of living at home while being paid just over $11 an hour working for Disney, because that meant that I could travel more. Between the years 2000 and 2003, I flew to and/or from Maryland, Washington DC, Kansas, Seattle, Vancouver, Nevada, Arizona, and all the states that I stopped over inbetween.

Now I have to pay for rent, my credit cards are all maxed out, and my credit rating is in the hole.

Right now I miss being able to drive. I haven't been able to drive for over a month because of my foot.

Like (I imagine) many people, I miss having the freedom to say "fuck it" and ditch everything and take off. Now there is partner, job, responsibility and soon enough kidlings.

But - my choice, so those yearnings are somewhat fleeting.

when I was 22 I missed being 6 and shy and able to fit in the cupboard under the laundry room table. Because I was 22 and people *saw* me and talked to me, which made me visible, and uncomfortable with it.

when I was 32 I missed being sixteen with the new freedom a car and a summer job and my budding interest in friends and being social entailed. Because I was 32 and responsible with a long-term SO and a real job and car payments... and on reflection pretty much everything cmonkey said.

now I'm 38, I have a job that pays crap by the hour, with no benefits. But I can ride my bike at 3PM on Tuesday if I want. I can take Wednesdays off to go ski, or bracket a long weekend to go mountain biking in Crested Butte. I have an amazing group of friends from every generation, ethnicity, background and income. My debt is gone, my bills are paid, my roommate rocks and my stress level is zero. So I miss very little about the last fifteen years.

What I do miss are the friends of my youth. Shane, you amazing street skater, you taught me how to ollie (almost) as high as a fire hydrant, and you once did a wallride on a moving bus that was pulling away from a stop. I can't watch a skateboarder today without thinking of your crazy white-boy fro and your Bob Marley tshirt flying in the breeze. Marcy, you taught me how to pull a perfect shot, introduced me to Siouxie and the Banshees, and had the most infectious laugh I've ever heard. I wish you hadn't dropped out of college and disappeared off the face of the earth. Tim, you beat heroin addiction, wrote brutally dance-addictive synth tracks and were so far ahead of your time with PC-based sequencing that you had to write your own software. I'm sorry I dropped the T3 down the stairs of your shitty Over The Rhine walkup, it was an accident, and you were so cool about that; thank god it survived. Sara, you taught me how to play canasta and never griped about my loser boyfriend when he kept screwing up our plans. You were right, he was kind of an ass, and I'm sorry it took me a decade to realise that.

cmonkey just put into words what I've been trying to say for about five years. I'm going to steal that and mail it to everybody I know.

I miss living in Oregon so much I feel it in my bones.