The Six Degrees of Matt Burns | home

I crash landed in this world on the 16th of March, you could say that I was one day shy of being born a drunk, but I'll stick with the fact that I was born in the midst of a wrathful blizzard. My early days were fuzzy so I don't have any funny stories about them, I don't believe people who remember anything before age three anyways. From what I can recall, I remember being on my own alot; I don't remember any particular people always in my daily life. My parents worked nights at a local factory, my dad went to college by day and my mom was usually handling me or my year younger sister. We usually slept at a friend's house, I remember the hard cot and a particular dream I had of seeing my mom outside taking a smoke, which she would never do and hence got me permanately weary of my nightly visions. My dad joined the air force when I was five and made me a military brat, always on the move, forever unsettled. Our first assignment took us up north to a base near Marquette, Michigan, it had about eight months of winter and two weeks of summer for seasons. In three years I accomplished much; I skipped pre-school to get sick on the tire swing and explore the woods behind my house, I met my first best friend also named Matt, I fell in love with dinosaurs and a girl named Ivy, who broke my heart when over the phone she told me she wanted to play with my friend Pablo instead of me. I played in the woods every day and found a great appreciation for nature, meanwhile I averaged about two wrecks a week on my bicycle and was forever holding a wash cloth on my forehead.

Kindergarten Pimp

My dad got assigned to a year in Korea half way through the school year, so the rest of the family moved down to Bedford,Iowa, basically where I grew up, being that it was the hub location of both sides of our relatives. Whenever you start a military career, you basically are dirt poor because the Air Force supplies you with what they think you need. We lived with my grandparents at first, that was a blast, my grandpa spoiled me rotten and as the principal of our school, I almost had a shield of educational invincibility. I reveled in those days; no authoritative father, being chased by girls on the playground, playing with a brand new nintendo power pad. I spent the summer in a tree house and making friends with all the lifeguards at the pool (they always let me be the last one out of the water at night). My mom was stressing over money and we moved to our cousin's house down the road where it was all the more fun and games with the Ritchies. They had every toy imaginable and we just saw the opportunity to play even more, forgetful of our rootless situation. It was blissful overcompensation. I remember watching Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers every afternoon and hating long division, being forced to actually finish your tray at lunch where I sat with my best friends Nate, Clint and Sean, I snorted sugar up my nose and played little league. We somehow got an actual house in the fall, it's screened in porch was lined with astroturf, it was riddled with boxelder bugs, the kids all shared one room and the biggest walkin closet in the world, and it only had a vintage bath tub for bathing, luckily I wasn't all into that yet. This was about the time that being fatherless sunk in, those long distance calls would always make me shroud a blanket over my head and cry for awhile. I would eat all my lima beans just to make my mom feel better. The next spring we got the exciting news, Dad was coming back and we were moving across the border to Nebraska. My class made me a going-away book, with everybody contributing a page of a memorable event in scribble drawings. I don't remember being too upset, just looking up at the stars through the back window of my grandma's chevy as we anxiously waited to see our new home.

It was a fresh morning, like the paint inside, a new house in a new place. It was a town called Papillion, south of the bustling metropolis of Omaha, it was a housing community named (future irony) Glenwood Hills and it was always surrounded by construction. We timed the move so as to split school's Christmas break and not be out of sync, I picked up in third grade Mrs. Aker's class. I spent my free time reading Snoopy's Big Book of Facts and I'm pretty sure this is where I picked up my penchant for useless trivia. I spent the next few months building up a circle of friends, Mike Knowles, Michael Mallory, various kids from the neighborhood, it was a time of recklessness and I was in the driver's seat. Fourth grade was mediocre, I learned how to tie my shoe finally. I met a girl named Melanie Roe and I fell in school boy love again. That summer my Aunt Sherri lived in with us as a nanny, she watched soaps all day as we messed her car up. We ran through the sprinkler for fun, digged up cow bones and explored the huge tracks of farm land surrounding the houses. We played in the creek, vandalized new houses, rode our bikes around and snuck into the haunted Mormon super-church beside us. We found a big ridge aways back in the woods and after some scrambling around we found a bunch of small glass bottles. Further inspection by parents revealed they were turn of the century Thomas Alva Edison Electric Oil bottles, a gold rush ensued and everybody got something fun out of it. One day I was back there by my lonesome, something splashed in the little pond and I ran up to the ridge top where I found myself peering into an imagined past of a big train wreck. A wind rushed through the parting, wide enough for the old train tracks, it sounded like a roar and I ran screaming from that ghost train spot.

Fifth grade was the last year I really slacked off in school, our teacher had a mandatory reading period. We listend to a pianist named Rick Keithe while we sucked on Jolly Ranchers. It was wonderful. I played little league football for the first time, had a dinosaur lunchbox, enjoyed group guy sleep overs and played Super Nintendo all night. My dad broke the dream, we had to uproot again after three years of somewhat tranquility, I didn't know what was more sad, another break from my roots or Keely's bed-wetting problem. We learned we were heading to Idaho, further West than personal memories could reach, and once again Dad had to take off for awhile and we were on our own again. We sold the house quickly, too quickly infact, we had to stay in a motel for the next three months and this place was the epitome of a white trash weighing station. Bikers, carnies, deadbeats and struggling divorces, even the occassional prostitute ring, it was home for the most part, we bonded with the other children, I dealth with the crush of an older redhead. I slept on the pull-out couch cushions and dealt with the onset of puberty, I used the spring warmth to play sandlot ball with my friends and remember being scared by the commercials and music for a new show called the X-Files. I was a cornfield away from the house tract and a million miles from feeling at home, but I made the most of it and fought out of pred-adolescent depression. Dad called with the news of a house waiting for us in Moutain Home, Idaho and once school was out, so were we. We crammed into the car, I don't remember any particular goodbyes, and we set off on a cross country vacation that took us to Mount Rushmore, that mountain in Close Encounters of the T hird Kind, and a nice stay in Yellowstone. Now comes the interesting part of this story, becoming a teen-anger.