A Couple of Maroons: Making a Big Splash

Detail from “Sun Glass”

By Craig McCollum & Maik Strosahl

[Editor’ Note: Today we launch a new column, under the byline of Columnist Maik Strosahl and his guest, Craig McCollum.]


This isn’t about me, Maik Strosahl.
    I was an awkward teen – I mean who wasn’t? But maybe I was a bit farther left field than most. I was the one who thought it would be funny for my friends and me to put Hostess wrapper characters in our Velcro wallets and flash them at people as if they were some special badge for a secret society. I was the one who wrote a satire called “The Cabbage Patch Massacre,” about a crazed German student who went around shredding 1982’s must-have Christmas present, making cole slaw and sauerkraut out of their stuffing. When that handwritten masterpiece got lost being passed around from student to student, I wrote the sequel. I encouraged a few brave classmates to stand on the street corner at lunch, pulling up our pantlegs to show passing cars our ankles, just trying to get reactions. And after reading the classic 1984, I decided it needed a sequel too, and created “1994,” where Big Momma was defeated by Veto Bomb Missiles – hidden in plain view as tubes of Aim toothpaste on billboards.
    Yet, this isn’t about me.
    Craig McCollum was one of those guys who let me know I was okay back then. He had a weird sense of humor – that way many of us 80’s teens had. I wish I could say I remember a lot of crazy things we once did together, but I can’t. Too many years, too many concussions. Perhaps it was our awkwardness that brought us together, in our own lonely worlds, struggling to just make it through.
    I lost track of Craig somewhere in the halls of Moline High – two Maroons of near 600 in the class of ’86 – lost track of most of my classmates as we launched our sails on the winds, to find our own paths in this world.
    In 2016, I decided to go to my first high school reunion. It was nice to tell the old stories and somehow comforting to find others who had the same roots, similar age-related struggles, enough in common to help each other just by being there. Again in 2021, we gathered for the 35th.
    After reconnecting with more of my classmates, a “friend” suggestion came up on Facebook. There was Craig. I figured he probably would not remember me, but decided to reach out anyway.
    He reached back.

    And in rediscovering an old friend, I discovered some things I never knew.
    This series, in my eyes, is about that discovery. This series is about reconnecting and the amazing talents we have cultivated that bring us together, that take us back and lead us forward, those talents that made a big splash in our lives and hopefully help us all be better people together.

“Sun Glass,” photograph by Craig McCollum, August 2021

    I hope you will join me and Craig on this journey of discovery and that we all can learn a thing or two about ourselves and those that once were part of our lives, for
    this really isn’t about me.
    It’s about us.

Copyright © 2021 by Craig McCollum & Maik Strosahl
Originally a flat lander, Craig A. McCollum received his degree in photography and headed west. He lives in Montana with his wife and two sons, exploring the outdoors while hiking, biking, and chasing moose – the latter only with a camera, of course.
Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.