Awesome, Dude

Henry likes guitars.

Electric guitars, acoustic guitars, famous guitars, whatever has the word 'guitar' in it. Henry likes fat ripe loud raucous rock music. 70's bands. 60's bands. He knows songs from before he was born, stuff I don't even know and didn't know then. Henry likes NYC, Manhattan anyway. He likes the way it looks and feels and smells, the commotion and ubiquity and endless thereness of both cement and humanity. He the likes the crowds on the street and how alive it is day or night, how it etches itself into your skin and your brain and becomes part of you, how you're never alone there, even when you are. Henry likes sea creatures, rocks, sticks, saltwater, water, period, when it's not too cold and it's not too hot, wild things, Henry Potter books, Henry Potter films, anything apparently by Michael Bay (this, I'm waiting for him to be 15 and get over the guy) cultishly great Korean films, vampires (who doesn't), Arrested Development, The Flight of the Conchords (again, yes, what great taste he has), saying Dude and saying it repeatedly, poetry, a good campfire, fishing, sushi, great jokes, cilantro, the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the color 'black'. Henry makes mean guacamole, dude. Henry wrote a poem for the Oregon Student Poetry Contest that received Honorable Mention (and deserved more, dude) that goes like this:

I can't forget the fish

the one that got away

the pig of a fish

the fish that took my flies

both of my flies

I can't forget the feeling

the feeling of hooking a great fish

the feeling of the line snapping

snapping under the fish's strength

tearing the tippet

the heavy 4x tippet

I can't forget the satisfaction

the satisfaction of the jerk

the fish pulling my fly rod

the curt but amazing jerk

the satisfying feeling

of hooking a monster fish

Smart, sensitive, funny, strong, loving, so good at so many things, becoming himself moment by moment, a boy, a man, almost there. I used to think having a girl would be the end-all be-all. Then I met Henry.

- Janet