Me and my links (1973-1998)

My name is Ezekiel Wade Sanborn. I go by Ezekiel, Zeke, Wade, Sanborn, and (Pronounced Sahm-Bone). I was born in Berkeley: home of Cal, Alta Bates Hospital, many X-hippies who never changed, even more X-Hippies who did, lots of kids who are pissed that they are not their X-Hippie parents, and my Pappy. I miss Berkeley, I heard its falling into the water with the rest of San Francisco(1/10/97).

My father woke up in the middle of the night with the name Ezekiel. My mother thought I was going to be a girl so she was willing to humor my dad with any boy's name he wanted if he let her go back to sleep. When I was conceived my parents had been staying with a black friend of theirs named John Ebo. After 56 hours of the less talked about side of labor (i.e. being labored), I was ripped out of my world via operation (Et tu Brutus). My oxygen deprived body came out black and blue. Thus my father's first words to my very-out-of-it mother were " I am gonna kill Ebo!" I livened up after the doctors did their thing, but my mother was out of it for a day or so. Thus my father named me all by himself, just like in his dream. I am named after the book of Ezekiel. They quoted Ezekiel in Pulp fiction and now I see my namesake's words a lot. I have only read some of the bible, but I have read the Book of Ezekiel. It is easy to recognize, God talks like a basketball player about to dunk on his opponent. I think that's why people like it these days. We like basketball.

At Berkeley High School we all had expensive Basketball shoes. They looked really good too. I could not dunk, but when no one was looking, I could shoot. Must have been the shoes.

I was not pissed I was not my father. I wanted to be a conservative, they look like this. I heard I could find a colony of them in Irvine, California. So at 18 years of age, I went to UCI. I had short hair and people called me Wade. My Pappy still called me Zeke, but I called him Pappy to get even. I drank beer, cut my hair shorter, and bought some suede shoes. Sometimes when I was alone in my room I studied Electrical Engineering.

The next year I grew my hair to my nose. My apartment smelled bad, and I bought lots of T-shirts. When people got the hell out of my house I studied Physics. I did pretty well, I think it was the T-shirts. I decided I wanted to be a liberal; UCI bugged me.

The next year, in a fit of dyslexia I left UCI and went to ICU. This is a school for Japanese who are very foreign, and foreigners who are very Japanese. I did not buy much of anything because Tokyo is far too expensive. Sometimes me and my friends would spend 50 dollars on a few tacos. They called me Zeke or Jik. I decided I did not want to be Japanese, I wanted to be my father. But I studied Japanese when there was a Kanji test the next day. I had rotten Japanese, but so did my father. They don't speak Japanese in Berkeley.

The next year I went back to UCI. I lived with three girls. One of them did not like me. I don't blame her. The other two ate hamburgers and lent me eggs( so they say.) I never studied anything at all that year. I did really bad but I bought a motorcycle. I liked being me. I started hanging out with Lenore that year. She called me Ezekiel instead of Zeke. We started going out.

The next summer I went to Boston. I studied technical Japanese at MIT, because I was lousy at both Physics and Japanese and felt I ought to combine my "talents." Some of my teachers did not like me because I still did not want to be Japanese. It is too difficult to say Ezekiel in Japanese. It sounds like "e-ze-ki-e-ru." I read a lot of literature. MIT is a good school, and Cambridge is a lot like Berkeley.

My last year of college, I drank wine for the first quarter with Lenore. She got a 4.0, but I did not do so well. The last two quarters I just studied Physics. I did well and they let me wear a blue ribbon around my neck when I graduated. Many of my friends did good for four whole years; they got to wear a yellow ribbon. I celebrated by drinking wine in Northern California and sitting in mud.

Now I live in Japan. I teach english to handicapped students. I speak a lot of Japanese. I am not fluent, I never will be. I like being me. I live in Aomori. We have great water, and lots of snow. They speak Tsugaru-ben here, it sounds nothing like Japanese.

This year (1998) in Aomori we (JETs and related friends) did a Shakespeare play called Comedy of Errors. It was in English because one can have only so many errors in a comedy. But Lenore made every one laugh by saying obscene words in Tsugaru-ben. So, I decided to do the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet in Tsugaru-ben (You wanna try an read it? However --you want to see it in English Characters...)

This year (1998) we will "Kabuki Shakespeare. "Kabuki" is the traditional Japanese drama; it kind of looks like William Shatner doing his best to overact Shakespeare (male and female roles) with more make up on than the average green Star Trek alien. Oh yeah, good ol' William is pronouncing the whole thing like some love stricken green alien just kick good ol' Willy in the, well, willy...