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Well, now that I have built the tiniest castle in the debate forum sand box, something I never intended to do but couldn’t resist, I shall go into a little more depth about myself. There might be at least a few interested souls, most likely the folks with their footprints on my silica Camelot. So my friends, as you sap away beneath my portcullis, before you set the timbers in your happy tunnel ablaze, you may be pleased to learn that I resign the keys to the tower and will present them to whoever feels the need to possess them. By the way, once you gain the keys you will find that the door to the keep is of the pre-hung, hollow core variety and can be broken down with only the mildest flailing of your puny arm. I sincerely hope you find what you are looking for.
I was born into a Roman Catholic family of northern European descent more years ago than I care to think about. I was the middle of three children, very, very close in age. (We were Catholic after all. I also have a sibling fourteen years younger. How this most fortunate accident occurred I’ll never know, because my parents appeared to have had the rhythm method down to a science.) Mom and Dad were both social workers and although my dad had a quick temper, he had a heart of gold and would go out of his way to help any person who asked. Last time I heard, he was dead. I am waiting patiently for that condition to change as there are a few things that I need to go over with him. My mother yet lives and is seated ten yards to my right. She is currently watching an old movie on AMC or TCM or one of those other black and white movie channels. I could ask her what movie it is but she won’t know and I am certain she has seen it several times before. She has Alzheimer’s disease. It is progressing very slowly, thank God, and I am not waiting with anticipation for her condition to change. Currently, I am her primary care-giver. ‘Cleaner of Poop’ is my middle name. That reminds me it’s medication time, be right back.
That didn’t take so long, only ten pills in the morning after her eggies and toast. I mix the one that was made for the horse with apple sauce. She has a little trouble swallowing pills but give her a burger and fries from Wendy’s and the hot and juicy single (no cheese, I have to draw the line somewhere) disappears in four bites. You figure it out, I cannot. Her doctor would like her to switch to oatmeal for breakfast but when given the choice between Quaker Oats or no breakfast at all, she chooses the latter. Even after showing her the kindly looking man on the container, Mom would not relent. I eventually gave up trying.
In Harrison Elementary School I was a dreamer. We lived less than a quarter mile from the school but I was always late and sometimes took as long as an hour to get home. One of my mother’s friends reported to have seen me after school walking very slowly around each and every tree between the street and the sidewalk on the way home one day, looking up and down each one, examining the leaves, branches, roots, resident aviary and insect population. In winter I recall the dirty piles of plowed snow on the road side with channels of water running in the gutter beneath, cutting tunnels in the snow capped peaks. Watery little caves; every mountain range on the street had them. I would look at each cavern entrance waiting patiently for a tiny canoe with a traveler inside to pop out of the dark troglodyte dungeon and into the clear light of day: a successful escape at last and I was the only witness. I did not do well in grammar school.
The sixth grade and middle school came around. Here I could start fresh, dazzle them with my brilliance but something was wrong. I was being treated like an imbecile. Me, all this talent locked up, waiting to be released. I knew I was special but nobody else seemed to notice. Apparently, unbeknownst to me or my parents my beloved grammar school had slipped the fifth grade class a Stanford-Binet assessment so they could be properly put through the sorter machine at Johnson Avenue Middle School. “Don’t worry class, this is just one of those pick a winner and fill in the dot tests; nothing to worry about, not important.” Well, if it was so unimportant then why the test? I didn’t realize that other kids were not like me. I excelled under pressure, most fifth graders did not. Looking back, it was the test where this girl, a tall girl kind of bright but not super bright, sort of a beta minus type. She was sitting next to me and on each section of the test, there were quite a few sections as I recall, she was finishing before me. I could not let this slide. I started pushing through the questions faster. She was still finishing first. I went for all I was worth, and finally on the last section I finished and looked over at her. She was still working. Victorious at last I watched as she went down the answer sheet and colored in each dot slowly and methodically and never once did she glance at the test booklet.
I remember the sorting machine. We rode on a conveyor belt single file, seated Indian style. The machine made a quite a racket. Then, after passing through row upon row of endless meander, the business end of the sorter was revealed. A giant hand of foam rubber and vinyl pushed each kid into his appropriate slot. The slot opened into a chute and the chute plopped the rattled student into his homeroom desk chair. As I sat in the new environment, I looked in the faces of the other kids at their desks, looking for someone familiar. There was the kid with the patch of white hair over his left ear. I knew him from gym. He was friends with Carmine Ozinski. I couldn’t think of his name. Where were my friends? Then there was that girl with those weird green eyes. Allison, I remember her name. She was having a rough time. The head custodian at Harrison last spring had found her in one of the ground floor broom closets with Reggie Baker. The meaner kids were calling her nasty names. I knew Reggie pretty well. Sometimes I would take one his assignments home with me and do it for him. I knew how he wrote, he showed me. It was simple, all caps pretty much, except for the t’s. He didn’t pay me or anything like that but when some new kid or other showed up and gave me any problems. Reggie would fix it.
He was great in gym class too. We used to play bombardment when it rained or was too cold to use the playground. He was always first to be picked by the captains and always the last man standing. He was good at basketball too. He didn’t play in the park near where the black folks lived. He would play at Anderson Park where it was mostly white. That’s where Dave, my brother, one year and sixteen days older, and I played. There were always a few black kids, but Reggie was a regular. One evening when Dave and I were both still at Harrison Elementary, it was late and we were all playing ball. Reggie played underneath the rim and didn’t miss a rebound. Dad came with his new Buick to pick us up. Well, it wasn’t exactly new, but it was new to us. Mom had complained that she was serving a cold dinner just about every night and that it was going to stop. Dusk was beginning close in and turn a pleasant early May dsy into a chilly evening.
My father didn’t round us up right away. He sat in the three tiered wooden bleachers and watched us play. After a while he put his fingers in his mouth and held down his tongue in some fashion that I could never quite get right and whistled one long tweet. My brother and I both stopped and said that we had to go. That broke up the game. My father called to Reggie: “Hey Reg, wanna ride?”
Reggie gave my father the strangest look. “I dunno.” The tall boy, who was too tall and muscular for his young age, a manling, that’s how I thought of him, looked up at the sky. The moon was out and the shadows on the court had all faded to a uniform charcoal gray. “Okay, sure.” The part of town where Reggie lived was near the river. Too near the river my dad said. When the moon was full and it rained, lots of the houses would get water.
“Spring tides can affect a swollen river when you’re this close to the estuary.” I didn’t know what it meant but it sounded profound. I realized later that it was not profound, to the contrary, it was kind of mundane. This statement you might read in a sixth grade earth science text. What a disappointment. Oh Dad, you were no Emerson like I had wished.
We reached Reggie’s home. His house was cheerier than many of those surrounding. The garden was full of rose bushes beautifully splayed out on white wooden trellises that radiated out like partially open Japanese fans. They stood up against a large open porch that was full of furniture that could only be described as an eclectic collection of very clean and comfy looking pieces. None of the roses were had flowered yet but you could detect the colors of the blooms from buds that were full and ready to pop.
“Are your parents home, Reggie? I’d like to say hello,” my father said.
The boy stared at my dad. “They don’t live here. This is my Gran’s house.”
“Oh, I see. Can I say hello to her then?”
“No, I don’t think so. She’s probly busy, dinner cookin’ an’ all.”
I couldn’t understand why Reggie was being so cagey. He was never that way with me.
Just at that moment in my nostalgic reverie, I looked up. Down the chute came Reggie. Then I realized just exactly where I was. I, for some strange reason, had been relegated to the slow class. How to tell my parents? If I did not, there would be Hell to pay when 'Back to School Night' came around.
To be continued.
I hope you enjoyed my little confection.
Thanks for stopping by and reading.
Peace.
LaughinJim
A Cozy Corner in Cyberspace
2012
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