Category Archives: Personal posts

I know that, many times in the past, I have mentioned that my father died on Christmas Eve in 1990. I have also mentioned that he was only 38 years old when he died. Of course since I was only 16 at the time, 38 seemed older than dirt. I guess it takes you a lot of years to realize that you weren’t really an adult when you were 16, it did for me at least.

I remember looking at my dad in the weeks leading up to his death, the death was totally unexpected and doesn’t have any actual bearing on my memories. I can remember that, in my sixteen year old eyes, he really looked old. He had the crow’s feet around his eyes, lots of gray hair, his skin was becoming leathery, he just looked old to my sixteen year old eyes. 38 is well over the hill to a child of 16.

Now that it is 2005, a full fifteen years after dad died, I am thinking that maybe he wasn’t as old as I really thought he was. The fact that I am 31 years old might play into that a bit. Now that I have three decades behind me, I find it pretty tough to think of anyone in their 30’s as old. I don’t think that anyone else who hits their 30’s would have a different opinion on that; 30 seems extremely old when you are a decade away from it. When you hit that 30 year old milestone it doesn’t seem so old anymore.

I still look into the mirror and think that I have looked exactly the same since High School, which is an absurd thought. My hair is turning to a magnificent silver color (one at a time), my skin is darker and far dryer than it was back then, my eyes are sinking (ever so slowly) into my skull, my skin knows exactly where to go when I laugh, thus creating lines on my face when I do so. Yes, it seems that 30 something might not be that old at all, also I should give up on the notion that I haven’t changed in appearance since High school.

I am reminded of the time when the child of one of our neighbor’s, who was mentally retarded, gave me some advice. I had just gotten my first pimple (one of many to come), and thought it was the end of the world. He (the mentally retarded, 20ish guy) said to me, “just wait until you turn 18 and go through puberty”. I didn’t laugh at him since I knew that he was mentally challenged, but I did question his logic (though not verbally). So, you turn 18 and you instantly have a full beard and pubic hair? That seemed pretty foolish, even to my 13 year old self (of course my grammar school actually taught sex education, if your parents were willing to sign the form).

Puberty is a process that takes years to get through, not like a race where there is only one clear winner. Everyone goes through puberty and it certainly doesn’t happen all at once on your 18th birthday. The same is true for the aging process. You don’t just wake up one day and look like you are 80, it takes years of trials, failures, successes and losses to get to that age. Every success, every loss, every trial, every failure, will mark you in some way. The mental aspects will better prepare you for the next trial, while the physical aspects will add creases to your skin (laugh lines if you have done well, wrinkles if you haven’t). Life, it seems, is a process.

Hidden away, in the back bedroom which we never use, I have a photo with my father in it. The photo shows my father and all of his siblings posing for the camera as a Christmas gift to their mother. Their mother has long since died (and I couldn’t make it to her funeral). I believe the picture was taken in about 1989, and every single person in the photo looks young, vibrant and about to tackle the world. None more so than my dad. He looks downright young in that photo. Out of the eight children in that photo, a few went on to tackle the world and become extremely successful, a few went on to become housewives to successful men (some of which have their own careers by now), one had a horrible stroke that made him basically an invalid (since his career was playing the guitar and singing), and then there is my dad, who died far too young.

38 years just doesn’t seem like infinity anymore.

When I look at that photo, hidden away in the guest bedroom, and look at my father’s face, I now know that he was only just a child when he died. 38 years on this earth is simply not enough time. Whatever evil he did in his life simply doesn’t justify him having to be eliminated from the earth at such a young age.

As the days blur by ( sort of like watching your life on camera, yet it is what is happening now) I often think about my dad. I bet the days blurred by for him just as they do for me. The childhood antics are lost to a dresser drawer somewhere, the proof of the antics is eventually traded or lost. The man that I thought was more powerful than THOR is reduced to a rapidly fading memory, a memory which can only be kept alive by the occasional glance at that photo, hidden away in the back bedroom. Eventually that photo will come down and I will be left with nothing but my memories, memories which are 15 years old already and certainly not getting any clearer.

Twenty years from now I doubt that there will be anyone who can remember my father at all. He will fade into the great oblivion. His life will have been no more than a speck on the windshield of time. He, and all of his siblings, will eventually be completely forgotten. While I have the one photo to look at, most others do not.

As my father is slowly, and systematically, forgotten about, I am left to wonder how the days blur by so fast. I will suffer the same fate as my father (hopefully some years from now), but I, too, will simply disappear into nothingness. I may be remembered for a few years, a dozen at best, but, eventually, everyone will completely forget that I ever existed.

While it would be quite noble to say that, on my death bed, I wished for world peace, the reality is that on my death bed I would be far more likely to wish/pray that I wasn’t going to die.

The days do blur by, try to take note of them as they do. You are never going to get this chance again.

Think back to the time when you were a very small child, you know the time, back when you thought that your parents had been granted the gift of ultimate wisdom; they knew every little detail about every little thing, or so you thought. It turns out that thunder doesn’t have anything to do with God moving his furniture around (if it does I am on a bee line to hell), it is all about atmospheric conditions. Things like the hot/cold fronts clashing against each other, the charged particles in the clouds looking for a surface to release their potential energy, a conveniently placed ground that can make the lightning happen, then, BAM you get the thunder. I doubt I would have been able to wrap my mind around something like that when I was six, but still, “God moving his furniture”, what kind of an answer is that (a variant of that is that it is God bowling)?

I have a very vague memory of asking how they made crayons. While I can’t remember for sure who gave which response, I am pretty sure that Mom was the one that tried to explain to me about the gathering of wax, adding of the coloring and so forth. The other response that I got (which I am pretty sure was from dad) was that they just take the nubs of crayons, sort them into bins of same colored crayons, melt them down, then make new crayons. Neither answer really made much sense to me at the time, of course I was pretty young. Looking back I am left only to wonder how, if the latter theory is true, did they make the very first crayon?

My parents had the ability to fabricate very elaborate lies. Example 1: Santa Claus, turns out he was never real at all. Example 2: The Easter Bunny, totally fabricated. Example 3: The Tooth Fairy, my parents didn’t even bother to have us put the teeth under our pillows, we just left them in a glass near the kitchen sink; The tooth fairy had a lot of ground to cover, you see, and it was easier to just leave them there, or something (I don’t remember either parent explaining why we had to leave our teeth by the kitchen sink while all the other kids put them other their pillows, but I do have a pretty selective memory). Example 4: God. While the jury is still out on whether or not this guy really exists, I am pretty sure that he is yet another example of how my parents fabricated so many beings to keep us in line. After all, if God was so good then why didn’t the parents go to church with us kids?

By the time my parents divorced I was pretty sure that all of those characters weren’t real. Slowly, one by one, my Mom admitted that they were made up. All except God, that is. To this day I don’t know that I have ever gotten a straight answer out of Mom about God, though at this point I have already made a decision so it’s not like it would matter. Note to Christians: if you want your children to truly believe in god try to stay away from feeding them crap about the tooth fairy, Easter bunny and Santa Claus, then switch right at the end to say that you made the rest of the people up, but that GOD is real. Children may have small minds, but they remember the lies you feed them.

I have gone way, way off topic here. Well, way off the intended topic at the very least. So, moving on.

Those same parents aren’t without faults, but I am not going to go into that. I do want to go into some of the weird phrases that they, my parents, used though. One of my all time favorites has to be “get up and sit down”. Has there ever been a phrase uttered that is more of a dichotomy (not counting rap songs)? So I am expected to stand for an undetermined amount of time, then sit back down again? That must take some all-knowing parenting skills to use effectively, but what if I stand to late, or sit too soon? There is no goal there. What if I sit at the correct time, yet miss the getting up period by a fraction of a second? We need goals people, goals. We might be little now but eventually you will be in the old people place, how, then, will you react when I say “get up and sit down”? Work with me here!

I am getting closer to what I was wanting to bitch about, if you don’t like the fact that it has taken so long then why don’t you just “get up and sit down”?! Guess I told you.

So when I was in the 9th grade, Dad caught me and Dan smoking again. Dad had trained us from birth to be smokers; it was party entertainment to show us off to his friends while smoking, long before we ever hit our fifth birthdays (thanks dad). I haven’t quite been smoking since I was in the womb, but I am pretty damn close (thanks dad). When we got caught that time I got pretty irritated. First, because he was searching our room, second, because he got really pissed about me smoking, third, because he took my damn cigarettes. My allowance at the time was like a couple of bucks; it took my allowance, Dan’s allowance, and the buck a day, that dad gave me, that I didn’t pay for lunch (it was a buck a day for lunch at the time, in that school) to buy the damn cigarettes in the first place. Yeah, that pissed me off.

The best/funniest part of the whole ordeal was when dad was giving us the speech about how disappointed he was in us. One of the things that he said was “I better never catch you doing this again.” While I never said it, I was thinking exactly the same thing: Never let him catch us doing this again. To be honest, I was pretty pissed that he caught us that time, I was going to do everything in my power to make sure that he didn’t actually catch me doing it again (as per his request). Well everything short of just not doing it anymore; he threw down a challenge and I ran with it.

He never actually caught either myself or my brother smoking again, but he died only a year or two later. He knew that I was still smoking though; He asked me to pick him up a pack of cigarettes on the way home from town, then told me that he knew which gas station would sell them to you as long as you were in a car. He knew, but he never caught me.

The absolute worst moment in my entire life was on Christmas day in 1990. My father died on Christmas eve in 1990, so you do the math. I doubt I will ever be able to talk about that. Maybe I will try to call my mom right now and see if she has a sympathetic ear…

Tune in tomorrow for more fascinating, useless information.

This post has been a long time coming. When I started this whole blog thing I figured that I would start diving back into memories from my youth, and while the memories from my youth are grand, they simply aren’t the Blood on Blood memories of High school. What could possibly iconify that Blood on Blood attitude more so than a post to explain the logic behind it? Well, nothing, that is why I sit here typing.

I was a grade behind my brother when this alliance started to form. It was Dan, Dave and Steve that made up the core of this little group, while I was the little tag along that no one gave even half a shit about. As the High School years went on (actually I think it was after Dan’s first year of High School while living with dad), Dan moved away to live with my mom in Arizona. That left Dave, Steve and me to tear the whole state a new one, boy god how we tried.

I am probably not really proud of some of the stuff that we did, but I had a hand in it either way. I might have cared that I was with the girl that I thought would be my wife, yet I didn’t let that have any effect on our nightly prowl. We were closer than brothers, and as such we chose the old Bon Jovi song Blood on Blood as an anthem (it is the first song on the list you get there if you happen to click through).

I haven’t heard from Dave or Steve in a lot of years now. I guess that is sort of the way it goes when you are children (basically) talking about the life you will lead later. No one really knows where their life is going to go, mere speculation does not a doctor make. We have all gone our own ways to live separate lives, which is good, there must be something after high school, right?

Yet, as I sit here thinking, I can remember only one of the very last lines from that damned Bon Jovi song. It says, “Through the years and miles between us, it’s been a long and lonely ride, but if I got that call in the dead of the night, I’d be right by your side… Like blood on blood.”

I don’t really know what happened to Dave Tolleson and Steve Fausnaugh, but I really would like to. And like the song says, though I haven’t spoken to one of them in Ten years, and the other in 15, if I got that call in the dead of the night, I would be there in the morning.  We were, after all, like blood on blood.

That is all.

It has come to my attention that every post I make about my childhood makes my father seem like some sort of evil villain whose only goal is to beat women and children. That is certainly not true. Therefore, I will type a bit in defense of the man that I have so demonized with the majority of my posts.

Scanning my mind for memories, the first one that pops up is not necessarily good, but keep in mind that I am trying to think of memories, not hearing a sound, sensing a smell, or otherwise having a memory triggered. Dad thought that it was pretty damn funny to show his friends how us kids could smoke, even when we were only four or five years old. Thing is he really didn’t want us to learn how to smoke, more like we were puppies that he was teaching new tricks to. By the time he actually caught me smoking for the first time, I think I was 12, he was terribly angry about it (which was good). Not necessarily the way to raise a smoke free child though.

Again, that was a bad example. Moving on.

I liked to play with matches as a child. I don’t really know why. It was sort of like a little package that provided 20 fourth or July’s. Since matches cost (even today) way less than a dollar for fifty books, it was never noticed when I snuck them out to play with them. Most of the time I would just go outside while mom was busy and just light them to watch them burn. Sometimes I would light little pieces of dry grass (while holding that in my hand also) just to watch the shape it took as it went from the yellowish to charcoal. I really can’t explain what it was about fire that so captivated me because I really don’t know. It could have been a power over the elements thing but, honestly, at six years old I don’t think my mind was yet at that level.

One day I happened into the back yard with a book of matches, which I had stolen out of the kitchen drawer while mom was washing the dishes next to it. I fired a few of those suckers up just to watch them burn. I must note that I didn’t really ever move from the spot I was firing off the matches during this entire time. When the book had only a few matches left in it, I figured it was about time to see how much bigger the flame would be with more than one match. The problem was that since I was only five or six at the time, I mistakenly believed that only the matches were flammable, not the cover itself. As I lit the remaining matches, then watched the huge flame burn down closer and closer to my hand, I was pretty confident that it would just go out…Any second now…It never did.

The second that the flame became too hot for me to hold onto is when I dropped the matchbook. It is also one of the most vivid photos in my head. I wish I were an artist so that I could recreate the exact moment when that matchbook touched the ground. There were no ’embers’, there was no ‘smoldering’, that matchbook hit the ground and there was instant fire. It was pretty small at first; probably only a couple of square feet, which I thought I could put out alone. Boy was I ever wrong…

I was playing with the matches next to an old, broken down stationwagon when the fire started. The nearest liquid, of any sort, was in a little yellow pail next to the broken down car. To this day I am not entirely sure what that liquid was, and there was very little of it in that little yellow bucket. I think it must have been gasoline or some other accelerant though, since the second I dumped it on the fire it went from bad to holy fuck (yes I was only five or six, yes I actually did say ‘Holy Fuck’). Now the whole back yard was on fire. There was no way I was taking on flames taller than me, mostly since I didn’t have anything that resembled water anywhere nearby. I ran like hell back to the house. I was screaming “Fire!” with every step.

Mom called the fire department the very second she heard my screams, while the neighbors had taken hoses from their own homes to start battling it. It was put out before the fire department got there, yet they still had to investigate, I guess they were looking for signs of arson. In my little mind I was thinking that the fire was out so I was in the clear. Turns out those fire station guys are pretty good at finding the source of the fire. They found the matchbook, as well as the little yellow bucket, and were able to pinpoint the exact spot that the fire started, of course they didn’t have any DNA evidence so they had to let me go. Truth is that the fire department knew that I was the one who started it, even though mom said that I hadn’t been out of her sight long enough to do it. Anyone with a brain (except possibly a five or six year old) knew that that story was absolute bullshit.

Mom knew that I did, she had to have known. Yet I had to wait until dad got home to see what my punishment would be. Sometimes, when you are a child, the waiting for punishment, while knowing what you did wrong, is far worse than any punishment that the parents can give you. I am pretty sure that Dad knew that I did it the very second he walked in the door. The first time he asked me if I did it, I am pretty sure that I phrased my answer with a question mark, “no?”. When he asked me again I knew that the game was up, if there ever was a game. I told him that I did it. He asked me how I felt, I told him that I felt bad and scared. When he asked me why I lied to him the first time I had to tell him the truth, “I was scared.”

I don’t remember my punishment for that offense. What I do remember is that it did not involve his belt. Also, Dad said that it “pissed him off more to be lied to” than to “hear the truth, no matter how bad it is, the first time he asked the question”. That is one lesson that I know I have taken to heart. You can call me anything you want, except a Liar. I will take offense to that. My word has been absolute truth since that point, except for the occasional white lie to keep from injuring others feelings.

Keeping that in mind, I took dad’s girlfriend’s car for a joy ride one night (I was probably 13 at the time). My brother Dan was still living with us at the time, and was also in the car. I was probably drunk (I had had a couple of beers, but was only 13 or so, so yeah, drunk), and on top of that I actually took a hit off of a joint that one of Dan’s friends happened to have. Then we went out joy riding. Dan was pretty capable of keeping it on the road (the road being all gravel in rural Oregon), and he did a few fishtails just to show off. Once we reached the end of the road, that being the cul de sac less than a mile away, I told him I wanted to drive it back. Big mistake.

I had more drugs in me than Keith Richards (as an infant) but thought I was good to drive, even though I wasn’t licensed to drive in the first damn place. It went pretty well for the first half of a mile, then I decided to do some fishtails on the loose, gravel road. That was when all hell broke loose.

I did a couple of fishtails, just enough to throw around the gravel, then, as if some outside force were acting on the car (inertia possibly?) the whipping motion grew larger and larger. I often like to fault my brother Dan for not pulling the emergency brake, but, seriously, this car was a front wheel drive, no amount of pulling the emergency brake was going to stop the car. When I went to hit the brake pedal, my foot slipped off of it and fell directly on the gas pedal. It powered the car into the inevitable spin that I already had it in, this lead to landing the car in a ditch of sorts. If you can call a ditch a twenty foot vertical drop that is only stopped by a very small tree fifteen feet down.

When we touched down, as it were, I assessed the situation and figured that I was probably “pretty fucked”. I ran back home with my brother and told him that he should go immediately to bed so that I alone could take the punishment for this one. Dan did go to bed. I left a note on Dad’s door that said I was sleeping on the couch and really needed to talk to him. But, dad was wise to us, he knew that if I was gonna take the fall for whatever happened that it must be Dan that initiated it. He woke up Dan first, just to see what happened. Dan must not have said a word to him about it since Dad woke me up next, with no idea why I left the note on his door.

Remembering that Dad really hated to be lied to, I never lied. Well, with the possible exception of not mentioning Dan’s name during questioning. I did this, it is my fault and I will take the wrath. I told Dad that I had dumped his girlfriend’s car into a ditch. Dad seemed a little too happy at that revelation, I expected a beating or something. Still, I had to go show him where I “dumped the car into the ditch”.

It took two travels (two each way) up and down that road before I finally spotted the car. Here I must note that he was pretty pissed that I told him that I put the car into a ditch, yet it took driving by that ditch four times to find it (some ditches are deeper than others, right?). We ended up busting out a couple of tractors to pull the thing out of the ditch (Dad called it a ravine).

No harm, no foul, right?

There was a lot of harm though. The little Toyota Celica was never going to look the same again. I caved in the driver door (when the car hit the tree in that little ditch) but the rest of the damage was so not me. The car hit on the driver’s side (which was when I told dan to run and let me take the punishment) the trees never touched the front or back of the car. Somehow the front end of the little car was also pretty mangled.

It turns out that my dad had wrecked the same car only a few days before, but failed to mention that to his girlfriend. My wrecking of the car gave him the perfect scapegoat (thanks dad). He laid all of the the blame off on me, my punishment was to drag scrap from the forest (5 acres of which we lived on) back to the burn piles, every day, for a year. (thanks dad). But there was no beating with a belt.

I must note that I only know the truth about the celica since I overheard him talking to a friend about it. Which probably pisses me off even more. He should have thanked me for wrecking that car so that he didn’t have to fess up to it. Instead, I got year round forest patrol, but no beating with a belt.

I started this post to defend my father, it has gone horribly the other direction. I really have to call it an end.

Dad was a good guy. I learned a lot of lessons from him. Perhaps, in time, I will have visual or physical triggers that bring him back to mind. As of now I really don’t have anything.

Growing up isn’t exactly easy, it’s not meant to be, it is something that you have to do to, well, grow up. Every time that I think I may have had it bad as a child, all I have to do is look at some underdeveloped countries to see kids who have it far worse. At the same time I can look to other people, say George W. Bush for example, who have had it so easy that my story seems like that of a child from an underdeveloped country. That is neither here nor there, simply an observation. I do have a lot of memories from my youth, some good, some bad, and another one leapt into mind today.

Moving from school to school as a child is a very difficult thing. In all honesty the reason that I moved back to live with my dad in the 8th grade was so that I would be able to start making friends that I would have an alliance with for the remainder of middle school, who would then go to the same high school. That was a comforting thought.

I must say that the musical chairs game of schools started even before my parents got divorced. There were at least four grade schools in the town I grew up in, a fact I know because I attended four different grade schools there; Riverside, Fir Grove, Eastwood and Rose. My first year of school was at Riverside, where I got my first student of the month honor, which happened to be my very first month in any kind of school (there was no kindergarten for us kids, we could read and write better than most classmates by the first grade though, thanks to Mom’s at home teachings). Of course, in my tiny little mind I thought that the teacher really had a thing for me, yet, in retrospect, I don’t think Mrs. Crane was really into that six-year-old action.

Riverside was closed after my first year there. I don’t know exactly why. I know that the talk I heard at the time was that it was too close to a busy street (Garden Valley Boulevard), which it was, but had always been, the other topic was how close it was to the South Umpqua river, which was a hell of a trek from the school, at least a mile. In hindsight I think the more likely reason is that there simply wasn’t enough money in the school district to keep all of the schools open and Riverside simply didn’t have the number of affluent parents that the other schools did. Net result; Riverside closed and the students were relocated to the three other schools based on where they lived (well four different schools, since some of the kids ended up going to a school called Sunny Slope, which was a couple of miles out of town).

As I sit here now, looking through an old school years book that Mom recently gave me, I note that the friends that I list in the second grade do not include any from the first. The likely reason for this is that they were transferred to the other schools and I had to start fresh. Another oddity for the second grade was that I had torn through the second grade math (you know addition and subtraction) and was well into the third grade math (multiplication), finishing each of the tests with, at lowest a 94%, yet the teacher took time to note that I needed to work on my penmanship on math tests. You see, these tests were timed, first you had to do it in 6 minutes, then 5, then 4, etc. Of course it is going to be a bit sloppy as your seven year old hands try to scribble out calculations that your brain makes in fractions of a second. Jeez.

(To this day I have horrible penmanship. If I try to write anything in cursive it is illegible, and my block print isn’t far behind. Such a plus that paper is on its way out…)

Third grade brought about two very distinct things. 1) I was accepted into the Able and Gifted program. 2) My parents separated (I don’t know when they actually got the divorce, so bear with me). At first I excelled in the gifted program but, once my parents separated it got more and more difficult. One of the challenges that we had, the one that I can still remember like it was yesterday, was a very simple task: Move a brick further than anyone else using nothing but a mousetrap. The mousetrap and brick were supplied, if you wanted any other materials it was up to you to get them. I lost horribly, though I did learn to read the fine print. See, it said that if you created any sort of apparatus to meet the goal, the length of travel would be measured once the brick left that apparatus. I still think I got screwed since the kid that won put the brick on a skateboard that went down a ramp (exactly like the one I created: two boards nailed together at a right angle stood up and held in place by a dowel that the mousetrap ripped out of place, thus making a hill to go down.) I didn’t have a lot of material to work with so I just covered my ramp with glossy pictures from magazines, did the same to the brick, and it went off the end by a few inches. The kid that won went many, many feet, but he was still on his apparatus when he won…Evidently the skateboard didn’t count as an apparatus (of course if I wanted him to be faulted by the skateboard I would have had to be faulted for the glossy paper. What can I say, I am a sore loser).

Anyway.

Fourth grade happened. At least I think it did. It must have since I did get to fifth grade. Thing is I started this grade out at Eastwood (that is three different grade schools in four years if you are keeping track at home), but got a note to go to the office one day and then wound up at a grade school in Benson, AZ a couple of days later. (totally as an aside, I had leant this cool sharpie that wrote in silver to a girl named Melissa at Eastwood and never got it back before we moved out of town. If you are reading this, Melissa, can I have my cool sharpie back? Thanks.) My teacher in Benson was Mr. Davis, he had a lot of medical problems and spent the majority of his time rolling cigarettes while he let us figure shit out on our own (that is no joke). Thankfully I was whisked away to a new teacher, in a new town, only a couple of months later.

The new teacher’s name was Mrs. Ingram. She was nice because she understood that while I might not be at exactly the place that her class was, I had learned a lot that they hadn’t and vice versa (since grade schools don’t all use the same books, especially if they are not in the same state). I remember one time when she put a complex equation on the board (it was fourth grade so it was likely only long division) and asked the class to solve it, when no one else could she asked me to come to the board and do it, which I did, thus shunning me from this entire class of students. I was now entrenched as the ‘stupid geek’, if they actually had that term at that time. There was another kid in this class, we all called him Mooney ( I don’t know if that was his real name or not), who was also an outcast and we kind of teamed up. Isn’t that the best kind of friendship? The type when you become friends because no one else will accept you? I don’t know if it is the best kind of friendship, but I do know that other than Asher Arnold (who was in the same class and happened to be a seventh day Adventist) who was also my friend only because we were all outcasts, I don’t remember a single person from that class or that school.

Another aside. I accidentally broke Mooney’s leg one day at recess while we were playing a complex game of keep away with all the other kids. It certainly wasn’t intentional, hell he was on my team. I actually got the nickname legbreaker after that, well that and another incident at a different school, which I am just about to get to.

My brief stay at the school in Tombstone was punctuated by breaking my best friend’s leg. Woo hoo? The I was back to Benson, where the teacher thought I was stupid and lots of the other kids just plain didn’t like me. Why? I don’t know. They had all been together in school for four years, I had no idea who any of them were. There was one girl though, I don’t remember her name, that like to sucker punch me any chance she got. She actually grabbed my (well put me in a head lock) and screamed, “why did you come back?” the day I got back to school. Warm welcome eh? She went on to push me to the ground and pummel me until I finally just punched her square in the nose, an action that I was scolded for since, you know, she was just a girl. (that girl was later in trouble after she ripped so much hair out of my cousin’s head that he was bald in places). Love that fourth grade.

Now on to the fifth grade! I have already been in five schools (six if you count Benson twice) what fun! My teacher was one Mr. McKay. He was such a jackass. The school in question is in Cochise, AZ. At the time I was there there were exactly 42 students total, and that covered Kindergarten through the 8th grade. Each teacher taught several years. McKay had 5th and 6th, which was probably the biggest class since there were like 14 of us there. I never made any friends there really, and beyond that, McKay put me into a remedial reading class. Why? He was giving me workbooks that I had done years before at other schools, it bored me to tears. Funny incident regarding the guy though, he sent a letter to my mom about my brother’s poor performance in reading, which my mom let my brother correct and sent it back to him. Other incidents that I can attribute to Mr. McKay include, but are not limited to, being the subject of sexual harassment claims against a 12 year old girl, forcing a student to stand on top of a fire ant hill for detention, then adding additional detentions when the student moved away from the ant hill, and my personal favorite, though not nearly as heinous, spending ten minutes trying to retrieve a penny, which had been super glued to the sidewalk, then putting it into his pocket and driving home.

McKay was some piece of work. My IOWA test results (I am not linking to a site since I don’t know which might have been the official test in the mid eighties) averaged in the 92nd percentile of everyone my age. All of the math skills were above the 96th percentile. The reading skill (remember he gave me remedial reading) was in the 94th percentile. Thus proving my theory that you can skate through college with a D average and still become a teacher. Seriously, think about it, someone is Valedictorian, someone is Salutatorian, the rest are just people that did progressively worse than the others, someone had to just barely make it through with a low D average and graduate at the very bottom of the class, right?

Cochise had so few students that they required a couple of classes that you don’t normally have to take. Such as band. You were required to be in band. I thought that would be cool, I really wanted to play the drums or saxophone, those positions had been filled for years, so I got the trumpet…I hated the trumpet…We were also required to participate in team sports (I think that the K-3 kids weren’t required) since if we weren’t all there there wouldn’t be enough to make a team. We never practiced much, in fact the track and field event that I participated in would make a really great story, but not today. Soccer is what is on my mind, or it was when I started this post.

Sorry Angie! It was during Soccer practice that I broke Angie’s leg. Thus I had broken the legs of two separate people in less than a year. I was well on my way to mob status. I really didn’t like soccer, well I didn’t hate it, well, hell, I don’t know. I had to play it, I played it, and I was pretty good at it, provided people’s shins stayed out of the damn way. After two horrible misfires (resulting in broken legs) you would think that the other kids would eventually figure out that they should just get the hell out of the way when I pulled back to kick, and they did. This gave me the illusion that I was actually good at the game, when in reality it was only that people knew that I broke Mooney’s leg, then Angie’s, and they just didn’t want to have the ball anywhere near me, at least that is how I see it in hindsight.

Now that Soccer is my new best thing I want a shirt to show off that fact. I asked my mom if she could buy me a shirt that said #1 Soccer Player, then, while talking to her I tried to fact check myself, “maybe #2 soccer player, I know that David is way better than me. Maybe #3 soccer player just to be sure.” I didn’t want to lie, you see. I just wanted to stake my place on the totem pole that is soccer.

When I woke the next morning there was a pretty white shirt laying across the edge of the couch that proudly proclaimed, “#1 Soccer Player” in bold blue letters. Turns out that mom had a lot more faith in my ability than I did. For one glorious day I was the “#1 Soccer Player”. I wore that shirt with pride. Unfortunately, as it turns out, Mom had spent her night awake stenciling that onto a plain white T-shirt, using only the magic markers that she had on hand. That bold statement, “#1 Soccer Player” washed away just as fast as my interest in soccer. Her sleepless night spent making that stupid T-shirt is a sacrifice that I will not, can not, ever forget. We might not have had much, but she did have a T-shirt and a stencil set, and she stayed up to make sure that my humble wish came true.

Mom may not have had the materials to make the shirt I wanted, and thank god she didn’t since I totally sucked at soccer, but she made my (then) dream come true. I am not entirely sure if I ever told her, or if she otherwise knew, that the lettering washed away, it doesn’t seem to matter. She made me that shirt out of love, and love was really the only commodity that we had at that point…

Mom certainly had the market cornered on the love thing, well some was reciprocated but I don’t think it will ever be enough. While it is difficult to find a way to thank her for ripping me from my roots (abusive father), it is easy to find ways to thank her for everything else, such as ripping me from my roots (abusive father). Mom, you did a damn good job, if anyone ever tells you different I have people that can take care of them…

Another aside, but still a question, did you ever notice that no one ever thanks their dad when they win a sporting event?