Erik

Year: 1994 or 1995.  Not sure which.
Place: High Level, AB
My age: 16 or 17

Yeah, I forget if this happened during the summer between grade 10 and grade 11 or the summer between grade 11 and grade 12.  Doesn't really matter.  I'm leaning towards 1995, but I could be mistaken.

So, like I said, it was summer, so I wasn't in school.  Dad was working in High Level for the North Peace Tribal Council, which happens to be where he still is working today.  Mum and some of us younger kids went up to spend the summer there with him.  Under Dad's urgings, I went out and got a job while I was up there.  I was hired at A&W, where I worked at the till and in the dining room.  For whatever reason, the people who ran the place never made me a name tag.  Since it was against the rules to wear a uniform without a name tag, they made me wear the name tag of the guy who had worn the uniform before me.  His name was Erik.  And, therefore, while I worked at A&W, my name was Erik.  Mike MacKenzie got the pay checks, but Erik did all the work.

It was a terrible job.  That's no surprise to anyone who has ever worked fast food before.  Those jobs are, by definition, terrible.  What made it worse for me was the complete isolation I felt working there.  My co-workers all knew each other from school, and were friends as a result.  I was shy, and on top of that, I knew that I would never see any of these people again after my two months of employment were up.  So I made no connections with them even though I worked side-by-side with them everyday.  It didn't depress me or anything, but it made it harder to cope with such a crappy job.

My favourite moment as Erik would have had to come when I was mopping the floor one evening.  There were a couple of cute girls my age eating at a table near where I was mopping.  After ignoring a few "Hey Eriks" from them, I realized that, oh right, I'm Erik.  I turned to them with all of the teenage suave I was famous for and said, "Sorry.  My name's not Erik.  It's just what my name tag says."

"Oh," they replied.  End of conversation.

Aw, yeah!  I was a pimp, dawg!

One Year at a Time

This post is kind of a departure from everything I've done on this blog to date. Instead of writing about one memory that I have of the '90s, I'm going to post 11 pictures (one from each year, plus an extra one in 1994) and tell the story and/or the feelings that come to me when I look at them.

1990
Place: Raymond, Alberta
My age: 12
From left to right, that's Rob, Dad, and me. No, we aren't napping together on Mum and Dad's bed. The newspaper is on the floor, and we're all reading it. Rob and Dad did this a lot, and I joined them just because I liked to feel like one of the men. Rob was a young adult by this time, and I was just revving up for puberty, and I sometimes felt left out of the manly things in my female-dominated family.

1991
Place: Lethbridge, Alberta
My age: 13
This is me and Mum at our ward Christmas party. It's not the most interesting photo I found from '91 (I had some amusing Tae Kwon Do photos), but it's the one I like the best. It's a good picture of me. I'm actually smiling. Maybe it's just my knowledge of what was going on at the time, but I think you can see sadness in my eyes. I was going through hell at school. I really like this picture of Mum, too. You can tell just looking at her that she loves me very much.

1992
Place: Edmonton, Alberta
My age: 14
This is my favourite junior high school picture. I need a haircut (or at the very least, I need to start parting my hair in the middle like I started doing a few years later), but I look good otherwise. I was happier in Edmonton than I had been in Lethbridge, but I was also at my most shy as a result of what happened in the eighth grade. And I'm also noticing, just this moment, that when I smile, my right eye is open a little wider than my left eye.

1993
Place: Prince George, British Columbia
My age: 15
Sorry. This was the only picture from 1993 that I could find in my photo album. It's the house my family lived in on Merton Crescent in Prince George. I also apologize for how off-center it is. nice house, though. Shoveling the driveway was a bitch.

1994
Place: somewhere in the Northwest Territories
My age: 16
I always laugh at these pictures. Sara, Mary, Rachel, Noah, and I were spending the summer in High Level, Alberta, which is where my father works. We decided to drive up to the Northwest Territories. A few miles north of the border, we suffered a flat tire. Not a huge problem, we thought. Duane Oler had taught Rachel, Noah, and I how to change a flat tire mere months ago. But then we ran into a problem: we couldn't get the jack out of the trunk. It was fit snugly into a bracket in the side of the trunk. No matter how much we yanked on it, we couldn't get it to come out. The girls decided to walk back to the information centre at the border for help while Noah and I stayed with the car. As soon as the girls were out of sight, a thought struck me: lower the jack. I stood up, went to the trunk, turned the jack turnie-thingie counterclockwise, and it fell out of the bracket. I set to work to get the tire changed, when I noticed another problem: there weren't any tools besides the jack itself. Thankfully, the girls showed up a few minutes later with some guys who were better equipped, and we were soon driving back to High Level.

1995
Place: Raymond, Alberta
My age: 17
That's me in the chair, Neil Oler behind me, and Rachel's butt to the left. This was a week or so after Halloween. There was only crappy candy left. Some of the other kids decided it would be fun to see how many Rockets (Smarties to any Americans who may be reading) they could fit in their mouths at once. They didn't leave much for me, so I decided to see how many lemon-flavoured Starburst (the worst flavour, by the way) I could fit in my mouth. 21.

1996
Place: Raymond, Alberta
My age: 18
I won't say much about this one, because I plan on devoting an entire post to my high school graduation. This is me and Jake at prom with a plastic monstrosity of a horse pulling a crappy-looking chariot. I'm not going bald yet, but my hair is thinner than it was in high school. I'll often look back on it with fondness, except for when I'm looking at pictures like this. No matter how much I combed, no matter how much mousse or gel I used, I had those wings of hair fanning out on either side of my head. At least I don't have a goofy smile.

1997
Place: St. Albert, Alberta
My age: 19
This was immediately after coming home from California with Sara. On the second last day of our stay there, we went to Huntington Beach. Despite Dad's earnest warnings (he served his mission is southern California), we didn't use sunblock while lying on the beach. I burned pretty badly. I was in extreme pain as Sara and I made our way through various airports on the way home (Mum, Dad, Mary, and Emily were driving home), and I had to work a full shift at work the day after getting home. When I got home and changed out of my Soda Jerks uniform, I almost fainted when I saw a golf ball-sized blister on each leg. Sara took me to a health clinic, where they slathered me up with lotion and bandaged me up. But my arms and face are nicely tanned.

1998
Place: St. Albert, Alberta
My age: 20
It would have been easy to go with a Missionary Training Center picture here, but I decided to go with this one instead. It's me with my paternal grandmother, Thelma MacKenzie. I chose it because I don't have a lot of pictures of just the two of us together. In fact, I can't think of any others besides this one. Too bad there's that dark spot shadowing her. This was the day of my mission farewell/Thanksgiving dinner. We had an interesting relationship. We loved each other very much, but our conversations were very one-sided since only one of us could hear. She wasn't completely deaf (just the natural loss of hearing that comes with aging), but the pitch of my voice, even when I raised it, was perfectly in the range of sound she had a hard time hearing.

1999
Place: Dulag, Leyte, Philippines
My age: 21
This is one of my favourite mission photos. For one thing, I hadn't been so thin since I was 15, and I haven't been close to that thin since I got back to Canada. For another thing, look at those ugly decorations. This was at the house of a woman we taught and baptized. Her family had an ugly rug with those same dogs who are usually playing poker, and the ugliest fish carving I've ever seen. I needed to get them on film.

MT Vibes

Year: 1996
Place: Raymond, AB
My age: 17-18
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I was in a singing group called the MT Vibes in high school. I joined early in 1996, but the group originally formed, without a name, in the fall of 1995. Jake Heninger was one of the original members of the group. They started off singing at church functions and other organizations around Raymond. My favourite story that I heard about the group before I joined was when they were singing for the seniors at the hospital just before Christmas. A senile woman in the audience kept yelling, "Shut up! You sound terrible! You're ruining our dinner!"
I had joined the Raymond High School show choir in September of '95, and I quickly discovered that I did indeed have a decent singing voice and just hadn't known how to use it properly. I sang bass most of the time. In January of '96, Carol Dahl (the manager, teacher, and driving force behind the MT Vibes) told Jake that she should invite me to join them. I was the 11th member of the 12-man group. Cam Calder was the last to join. The twelve of us were: Jake Heninger, Kevin Calder, and Todd Keeler on top tenor; Jared Hardy, Landon Hardy, and Cam Calder on second tenor; Travis Bisset, Scott Parker, and Jay Dee Hall on baritone; Regan Dahl, Ted Holt, and myself on bass.
We continued singing all over southern alberta. Sacrament meetings, weddings, funerals, and other church events for the most part. My favourite function that we sung at would have to be the Alberta Provincial Cheerleading Competition in Magrath. No, we weren't competitors. We were the intermission. We sang for hundreds of screaming (the good kind of screaming) cheerleaders.
We practiced all the time, and we were ultimately working towards a concert in June. We booked the Raymond Community Centre for two nights, and we sold out both nights. Everyone loved the show, and it was one of the funnest things I've done in my life. Everyone who knew me was shocked. Remember, I was the shy guy at school and at church. I was more open around my friends and family, but no one in my family had ever really heard me sing before. My solo was Elvis Presley's "Teddy Bear". I didn't try to sound like Elvis (I can't do it), so I sang it in my own, natural voice. My family was left in shock. The girl I had a crush on was there, too, and she was my loudest fan. (Also, she was the greatest example of failing to seal the deal in my entire life. I didn't talk about her in my "Failing to Seal the Deal" post, because it would have been a post the size of a short novel, and it would have extended past the '90s, and that's breaking the rules.)
After the concert, Carol used the money we made plus some of her own money to buy some time in a few recording studios, and we eventually made our own CD, which we sold to friends, family, and fans around southern Alberta. It was a lot of fun, and very interesting to be part of recording an album.
The MT Vibes were a major starting point for cracking the shell of shyness that I had built up around myself. I had taken a chance and done something very public and potentially embarassing, and I had been received well.

Later, Carol made formed another similar singing group called Octovox, and one of them (Kyler Rasmussen) was a friend of my roommate's, and eventually became a friend of mine. But that was in 2004, so I shouldn't really be talking about it.

Pictures

Hey, I went back through some of the older posts and added pictures. Check 'em out.

DOOM

Year: 1993-1995
Place: Prince George, BC; St. Albert, AB; High Level, AB
My age: 15-17

I was actually less of a gaming nerd in the '90s than I am now, but I did have my moments in video gaming. I owned a Sega Master System in the early '90s, and Jake had a NES, but when consoles started to be replaced every four or five years, my parents weren't willing to continue buying me consoles. We did, however, always have a PC starting in 1992. I played and enjoyed Wolfenstein 3D and its sequel, Spear of Destiny, but the game that really blew my mind was id Software's DOOM.

Many hours in Prince George and St. Albert were spent at the computer with the lights off and the sound turned up while I crapped my pants as I played DOOM. It may be a very dated and unimpressive game by today's standards, but at the time, it was a cutting-edge game that made the first-person shooter genre of video games what it is today. Wolfenstein may have invented the genre, but DOOM put it on the map. The graphics were amazing compared to any other game at the time, the mood was perfectly eerie, the enemies were legitimately frightening, and the music either got your blood pumping or cranked up the suspense.
I found a website that has all of the music from the game, and I'm actually listening to it as I write this. I can picture the action of the game as I listen to the song from each level. Visit this link to hear the music from the first level of the game.

The first computer I played DOOM on was actually not quite powerful enough to handle it, so the movements on screen were very jerky and a little delayed. It was maddening at first, but the game was too good for me to stop playing, and I gradually learned to compensate for the lag in my computer's processor, and I got to the point that I could finish the game on it's Ultra-violent difficulty level. When we got a better computer, and the movement and controls were fluid and perfect, I was an unstoppable DOOMing machine.
DOOM II came out in either '94 or '95, and I wasted no time mastering that game, too. I spent the summer of '95 in High Level, and my cousin Mark and I would have nightly death match games against each other online. He and I were very equally skilled at the game, and it was a lot of fun to play against him.

There were cheat codes that I learned later which could be used to make the game easier, but I quickly grew bored of them because it took the challenge out of the game. I still remember some of the codes, though. IDDQD was god-mode, making you impervious to damage. IDKFA gave you all weapons, full ammo, and all the keys for the level. IDFA gave you all weapons and full ammo. IDBEHOLD brought up a menu that you could choose from, such as turn clipping off (walking through walls), berserker (super strength when you punch), partial invisibility, and goggles that allowed you to see in the dark.

I bought DOOM 3 a couple of years ago, but it just wasn't the same. I'd rather play Half-Life 2.

My Family in the '90s

As I mentioned in the subtitle of this blog, I turned 12 in 1990. But what of the rest of my family? Here is a rundown of what age everyone turned in 1990:

Mum: 42
Dad: 41
Rob: 18
Jenny: 17
Amy: 15
Sara: 14
Mary: 11
Emily: 4

My parents:
Mum and Dad celebrated their 19th anniversary on March 27, 1990. The '90s were a great time of change for them (hence the many places we lived in during this decade). All of our moves followed Dad's job changes. He started the decade as a customs officer working at the Canada/US border in Del Bonita and Coutts while we were living in Raymond. He also spent three months away from us (visiting every third weekend) in Quebec attending Customs College.
He bounced around for a while in the federal government until he finally ended up with the High Level Tribal Council (now known as the North Peace Tribal Council). Mum and Dad handled having six teenagers during the '90s remarkably well. It's really nothing short of miraculous that we turned out as well as we did and mostly stayed out of trouble, especially since we were constantly being uprooted and forced to make new friends every year or so. They always had our welfare in mind, and they dealt with us fairly and as friends, not just as their children.

We kept them busy. Of their seven children, Emily was the only one who didn't graduate high school in the '90s, and they had two weddings to deal with, too.

I don't have a lot of pictures of my mother from the '90s (she always seemed to be behind the camera), but I did find this one from my high school graduation:
Rob:
I only have one brother, and he is six years older than me with three girls between us. It was hard for us to relate with one another at times, with him being an '80s teenager and me being a '90s teenager, but we had our own unique relationship which I look back on with fondness. In the early '90s, Rob was significantly larger than me (18 compared to 12, remember), and he would use the advantage of his size to play games with me. "The Iron Bolt" seemed to be his favourite. Basically, he would clasp his hand around my wrist and hold on until he got tired of it or until I relented and said the magic word: mercy. I usually ended up saying mercy. Rob has admirable determination. When we lived in Lethbridge, it was one of the rare instances that we shared a room. We had a bunk bed. His bed was, of course, the top bunk. He called it the throne bed, and he would regularly force me to bow down to it. Rob served as a missionary for the LDS Church in Illinois from late 1991 to late 1993. I was 13 when he left and 15 when he got back. Upon his return, I was also as tall as he was and just as big, if not bigger. The days of saying mercy had passed. Not that he didn't still try to get me to say it, but I never again said it.

Here we are demonstrating the inherent problem with having six years between you and your only older brother:
This picture was taken in 1990. That's a blue-suede blazer I'm wearing. In 1990. Sure, when Rob wore this in the early '80s, it was stylish and slick. I wore it in 1990. 1990. See the thin, leather, zip-up tie? Yes, it's definitely 1990. "It's a nice blazer!" my mother always replied to my objections. Yes, Mum. It's a nice blazer in 1983. You made me wear it in 1990. Also, note our stylish footwear.

The Girls:
That's right, five sisters. Jealous? Probably not, but you should be. I'm serious. Do you realize how many cute girls I met because of my sisters? But it was more than just meeting pretty girls. I had a lot of fun with all five of my sisters. As I've mentioned before, I was a very shy teenager, and my sisters were a place for me to get some socializing done and have some plain old fun. Jenny, as my oldest sister, was almost like a second mother to me. She was also a writer, so I would often discuss my writing with her. I could always count on honest, contructive feedback from her. Amy was my compassionate sister. She always made me feel good about myself, and she'd comfort me when certain other sisters were driving me insane. Sara was a protective older sister. She'd watch out for my and my younger sister, and was even known to stand up to bullies who were giving me trouble back in the '80s. And, oddly enough, there was never a negative fallout for me after having my sister come to my rescue. Sara was also one of the sisters who would sometimes drive me insane, but she wasn't the main offender. Mary was the main offender. She and I argued incessantly for years. She knew exactly how to get under my skin and didn't often turn down the opportunity to practice. It didn't last, though. When I returned home to St. Albert in 1996 after living with Aunt Joyce for a year, Mary and I didn't fight nearly as often. We basically just grew out of it. Despite the bickering while growing up, she and I were always close, and it was nice (and still is nice) to enjoy the closeness without the arguing. Then there's Emily. I have a unique relationship with Emily that I don't really have with any of my other sisters. She's eight years younger then me, and the only one of my sibling that I clearly remember being a baby (a literal baby, not the figurative kind of baby). In the early '90s, I was her big brother protector. I once threw a dog down a flight of stairs after it had bitten her (inadvertently; it was going for her hamburger) when she was four. After I finished high school (Emily would have been 10) and moved back home, it was just me, Mary, and Emily at home. Mary was a popular high school girl doing her own thing with her friends, so it was me and Emily hanging out quite a bit. As a result, Emily and I developed a lot of the same interests. We both took up bass guitar, we were both interested in writing, we both liked Star Wars, we both listened to similar music, we were both great friends with our cousin Noah. I never had any of that with my other sisters. Not to that degree, anyway.

Anyway, long story short, I loved (mostly) having five sisters. And I'm sure my wife appreciates it now, because it's thanks to my sisters that she doesn't have to nag me about leaving the toilet seat up. Here's a picture of Dad and me with the five girls in 1992 (Mum is taking the picture, and Rob is in Illinois):
And here's a picture of the girls at Christmas in 1998:
New additions:
There were four new additions to the family during the '90s. The first was my first (of many) brothers-in-law, Anders, who married Jenny in 1995. Then came Cindy, who married Rob in 1998. She was my only sister-in-law until I got married in 2004. The other two additions were my first two nephews, Jonah and Sam, who are Jenny and Anders oldest two boys. Jonah was born in 1996. Here he is pictured with me:
I've been in the exact same pose with my own boys so many times it isn't even funny. Sam came along in 1998, just three weeks before I left on my mission. Here he is, pictured with me again:
That's Amy making the cool face in the background.

"Sweet...um...Everyone Else!"

Year: 1996
Place: Raymond
My age: 18

I moved in with my Aunt Joyce and her kids (Jake, Becca, and Noah) in late August of 1995. About two months later, she married her second husband, Duane Oler. Duane had five kids: Julie, Dan, Neil, Andrew, and Caroline. Neil has already made prominent appearances on the blog, and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned Andrew in at least one. Anyway, Julie was married and living in the States when I met the Olers (not to be confused with the Olers on my mother's side of the family), and the rest of the kids lived with their mother in Stirling. The four Olers would come to stay with us every weekend or so. Dan was a year or two older than Jake and me, Neil was Becca's age, and Andrew was Noah's age. And then there was Caroline. She was a quiet, unassuming 12-year-old girl with whom I never engaged in conversation. I mean, come on, it's not because I was jerk. She was quiet and 12; I was quiet and 18. What were we going to say to each other?

In a short time, we all forged attachments to our own particular Olers. Jake, who was always developing man-crushes on slightly older men, connected with Dan. Noah and I really connected with Neil, and we started a long tradition of going to Burger King--just the three of us--after midnight that still carries on today on the rare occasions that all three of us are in Lethbridge. Noah, Becca, and I also connected with Andrew, one of the most lovable and wholesome people I've ever met. Caroline, being significantly younger than us, didn't really connect until later years. In fact, when she was 18 and I was 24, I temporarily moved in with Joyce again, and we became great friends. But back in '96, I didn't pay much attention to her.

Case in point: One day in the late spring of 1996, I was asked to say a family prayer just before the Olers returned home to Stirling. I've always been bad with names. Sometimes they just slip away from me and I can't grab them. This is how part of my prayer went: "Please bless Dan, Neil, Andrew, and...um...everyone else that they'll return home safely." Her name just completely slipped my mind during the prayer, and there was nothing I could do except for the "everyone else" cop-out. I finished my prayer quickly as my cousins snickered, and then full-out laughed at me after saying "amen." "Caroline!" I declared amid the laughter. Her name returned to me exactly when it was too late to matter.

A couple years later, Noah was talking to Caroline, and my name came up. She had no clue who I was. So we're even.