A Deviant Mind

Now, in case anyone is wondering: I did not date Doug Smith in high school. Between music and comics, we were too busy having fun for that! One of my classmates recently noted that there was no way in HELL I could have ever come out of the closet at Hughes Kirk High School back in those days, in sleepy, conservative Muhlenberg County, Western Kentucky. So I didn't. But I quickly learned I didn't have to. After a very troubled childhood, the incredible times I DID have at Hughes Kirk with all my brand new awesome, accepting, artistically creative, lifesaving friends (Pam Evitts Camara was my first spunky friend who showed me how to stand up straight, fist up for myself, then Randy, David, Stewart, Mark, Mike, John and a couple others who made me their honorary Nerd Girl, a title I proudly carry to this day--we were the Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things crew LONG before those shows ever aired) showed me that I had finally, truly found my way HOME. All these friendships and connections carried me through what was coming next in my life. Believe me. There are other dear friends from Hughes Kirk who follow me on Facebook and social media to this very day. But our lives touched in various different ways, some deep and special, some tragic, but in my mention here, know that I acknowledge who you are. And you DO know who you are. 😉
Doug and I literally created our own universe to play in. We created characters to populate it. And Doug gave those characters to me in the end, because we had always said, one of these days we'd do our science fiction series, and it would be AWESOME.

Believe it or not: The crippled, betrayed Princess from 1980 trying to join a rebellion to regain her throne would later evolve into the mother....

We spent a lot of our class time writing stories and choreographing fight scenes. The sounds of blaster fire and light sabers could be heard ringing in the halls at Hughes Kirk High whenever Doug and I ran through. We'd rehearse dialogue like we were running our own radio plays. I wonder if anyone remembers the telekinesis games Doug and I played with the RPG dice in Ms. Pruitt's English class? 😉 More shocking: The looks on our classmates' faces when I flicked my finger at nothing and dice flew everywhere. Damn, I love those days.

...of crippled, betrayed Princess Najimi, who learns, though loyal friends are easy to come by, making one's way home is not always as easy as one would like.

This page symbolically lays out the bridged gap of the span of thirty-three years between what once was and what now is. From those early old adventures with cheesy writing, 80s hair and crude beginning art, characters scrapped and embellished, it was time for me to bridge the difference between the past and the future. I'd once thought of scrapping Captain Space and cleaning him up, making him a cooler, cleaner Tayge, but I see now I can never, ever do that. Captain Space remains, and this series is the next generation. It seems only fitting.

Many years later, Hughes-Kirk high school is closed. I drove past it back in May--after Doug and Donita's funeral--and seeing the run-down old building with broken windows made me feel infinitely sad. Its halls are empty, its classrooms dark, and nothing remains but the echoes of laughter in ghostly halls, the clatter of running sneakers, and, there--LISTEN!! Can you hear it? .....As you round the corner to go down the stairs--the faintest sound of a teenager's voice mimicking a light saber.