So, I say all of this because I haven't posted a real blog post in over three weeks. The first week hit me with depression. Not really because of summer, but three weeks ago, I didn't have a lot of plans or work or anything, so I just felt lethargic and bored to a point where I was unhappy. However, that changed over the past two weeks because I have had a lot of summer blockbuster critic screenings. I think over the past fifteen days, I have been to the movies ten of those days, and I have reviews and podcasts. My mood is up, and I have been trying to figure some new things up that are exciting, but I don't want to talk about them just yet because there are still a lot of things and negotiations that still need to take place, but I will update you all when things are more cemented and a done deal.
Like I have said in the past, I have a really long list of blog, or journal, topics that my dad used in his sophomore English classes he taught. There are over 500, and originally, the blog was just going to be me going through the list, but then I discovered that I have a lot to talk about and share, and I haven't really needed the list at all. However, this is one of those prompts. The one that jumped out at me was "Places Where I Have Lived". It doesn't really seem like I have, but to be honest, as I look back on my life, I have lived in quite a few places throughout my life, and I thought it would be cool to talk about them. I have stories from everywhere, so I am breaking them up into different blog posts.
If I go back to the beginning of my life, my first home was my mom's uterus where I lived for nine months before moving out and into a bunch of car seats, bassinets and cribs, as well as a lot of time on the floor. The first house I lived in was in Magna, Utah. My dad taught at Cyprus High School, where I later attended and graduated from. My dad takes a lot of pride in his houses and yards. What I see as yardwork, my dad sees as something constructive and relaxing. We had the nicest house in that neighborhood. We moved to West Jordan, Utah about fifteen minutes southeast of Magna when I was eight, almost nine. Our now next-door neighbor bought it from us to rent out if we gave him some of our land so he could build a bigger garage for all of their fun toys. He has kept up with the house, and it is still the nicest house in the neighborhood.
I was a little kid in Magna, so I didn't realize everything that was bad going on. Our neighbors on the right of us never did house or yard work. We called it the Magna City Dump. That's probably a mean thing to say, but you don't know the extent of how terrible the house and yard was. When the government comes in and takes the kids until a house and yard is cleaned to the State's approval, and they are gone for two months, yeah, that's how bad.
The neighbors on the other side of our house were drug dealers and drug users. I remember there were tons and tons of nights around midnight or so where we would hear police car sirens blaring, and people trying to run away from the house. We would always sit in our living room in the dark, but with the curtains open so we could watch everything going on without seeming like we were being rude, which I guess we kind of were, but at the same time, it was our neighborhood, and we wanted to know what was going on. I remember, they had three kids that were in my age range of friends. I played with them, and a girl my age from the Magna City Junkyard, and didn't really realize how terrible things were.
I remember going into my parent's bedroom to talk to my mom, but she was crying and couldn't talk. What had happened the night before that is the straw that broke the camel's back. Our house was the middle house in circle. So the neighbors on the right had the junk yard, the neighbors to the left were drug dealers and users, but the house on the corner, in front of the junk yard, were people who were self proclaimed Satan worshipers, and three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, they would go out walking around the neighborhood looking for people's pets, both cats and dogs, and then after they found and stole ten pets, they would "sacrifice" and torture the poor animals. I didn't know that was going on, but it totally was. The cops never saw any evidence of it, but our whole neighborhood heard everything. My parents tried to protect my sisters and me, and just said that the animals were hungry and crying for food, which is not what was happening, but I am glad they tried, and mostly succeeded.
An honorable mention were the neighbors that lived in back of us. Our backyard fence bordered their back yard. I remember, my dad took me to a lot of Jazz basketball games when I was a kid, when the tickets at the old Salt Palace were affordable. There were some people at a game that threw an orange plastic/rubber toy basketball that was about the size of a softball. My friends and I were playing in the backyard, and my ball went over the chain-linked fence, so I started to climb the fence to go retrieve my ball, and the woman came running out and yelled obscenities that I didn't even know at the time, trust me, when I learned what they were later on in life, I couldn't believe how vile and disgusting that woman was.
Anyway, she was saying that I was trying to steal their ball, and my friends and I argued back, but she was so scary and the way she was acting scared the living heck out of us. However, we were able to get the woman and her husband thrown in jail for a few years. They had a dog, and it's doghouse was in the corner of the fence where we could see him, and we knew they weren't really feeding him, so we would sneak out in the middle of the night and feed him. Well, we went in the backyard one afternoon, and the woman was hitting and kicking the dog. You could tell the dog hadn't eaten anything for a couple of weeks, and he could barely move. They never let the dog in the house, and the poor thing was suffering through the different elements of the weather. Anyway, my parents called the cops and an early version of animal control. We were able to save the dog, and he found a wonderful caring home. He was so cute. As for the woman and her husband, they were separated and thrown in jail for at least three years. I say at least three years because when we moved to our new home in West Jordan, they still hadn't been released, so I really hope they were stuck in there longer because they were terrible people.
I did have some really great friends from Magna though, and when I decided to go to Cyprus High School in Magna instead of West Jordan High School, I started to really love school, and I had friends from my first couple of years in elementary school before we moved, and most of them were all still there and I didn't have to try too hard to make friends because I already had some that I was still talking on the phone with, or I had friends from there where I would go sleep over at their house, or they came and slept over at our new house in West Jordan.
I don't talk about this too much, but I was bullied really, really bad at my three schools I attended in West Jordan. I had four really good friends, and we all lived super close together in West Jordan, and we hung out a lot, but school was hard. I was so blessed to have those friends. However, I wasn't bullied my first two years of elementary school in Magan, so I was able to kind of transfer to Cyprus High School without a reputation of being bullied and hated and beaten up. I loved high school out there in Magna, and although I know we really needed to move away from the particular house and neighborhood at the time, the friends I made in Magna have become life long friends, and I think about them fondly often.
I know Magna isn't the nicest place in the Salt Lake Valley, but most of the people that do live there are kind, accepting, friendly, and just all around great people. I know that not everyone is always going to like us for whatever reasons they have. I actually had a laugh one time. I was running for a class office, and I had a bunch of posters up, and someone wrote, "F--- Nathan Unck". I don't know who wrote it, but I annihilated the four others running against me. I guess that's a good thing to take away from this post, is that not everyone will like us, but I had great friends, did a lot of great things in high school, and the friends I made from Magna were some of the best friends I have ever had, and I still love them dearly, and I often think back on high school fondly.
Well, that's all I have for Part 1. I don't know if I will do them in a row, or just every once in a while. I think that sharing where I have lived and the places I've been and experienced make me who I am today, and there was always something great in all of the places I have lived.
Anyway, I hope you are all still doing well. Summer is upon us, and like I said, I am at the movies doing my film critic stuff as much as I can. I hope you don't judge me too hard for the way I described my old neighbors, but it's authentic, and that's how it really was. I always try to stay positive, but sometimes it's the negative things in our lives that bring about the positive. I will be back in a few days with a new blog post.
Uncky Nate Out!
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