Man, I am a total downer. I do not know why the first stories that come to mind are the horribly depressing ones. My childhood could be described as essentially uneventful. I should consider myself fortunate for not having anything truly bad happen to me. I had no abuse, no fighting, no drugs, and limited death. Maybe I am sifting through an otherwise pedestrian life tweezing out the big sad nuggets. I will make a deal with you. Here are some nice moments before I dig into the real heart breakers I am putting off diving into.
When I was 13 Johnny Poulous moved into the house at the end of the street. He was younger than me, but way cooler. We were inseparable until his family moved away before I started high school. Johnny and I would ride bikes everywhere and steal cigarettes from the convenience store. Johnny was the kid whose front tooth I knocked out playing hockey. Johnny was the kid I punched in the mouth while meditating. See, I used to meditate to get rid of headaches. One night while sleeping over I was doing just that. Apparently, and I still have no recollection of this at all, Johnny was waving his hands in front of my face. With my eyes closed and in a completely other world I somehow instinctively socked him in the eye. Eventually his mom forbade him from hanging out with me since he kept getting hurt in my presence.
It was an awkward time. I was quickly outgrowing my much younger neighborhood friends. My developing and uncoordinated frame was a weapon engineered to injure anyone unlucky enough to be smaller than me and within my field of travel. Also, I was becoming old enough to be allowed to tag along with the older guys and they were happy to try and corrupt me. Johnny’s parents were divorced and never home. So of course it was the party house. Their fun was my classroom, all funded by Johnny’s brother and his drug dealing. His drug dealing friends and those buying drugs were always around. One evening I was just hanging out in the living room with four or five of the guys. They were passing around a one-hitter fashioned to look like a cigarette. They tried to keep it secret, like I had never been around weed before. They kept laughing and saying things like “oh man, do you have a lighter? This smoke keeps going out…” I finally spoke up and told them I knew what they were doing and I did not care. Until that moment I had thought that was indeed the first time I was around weed. It took me a few days for me to place where I recognized the smell. I flashed back to me about 5 years old and my dad in the old musty basement. Such a great smell.
Andy used to punch me in the stomach every day. He was just fallowing orders, but I am sure he enjoyed it. A couple of the older guys, Chris and Dave, they lived on either side of me. Every day after school they would make Andy and I go to the bottom of the hill and fight. I know now that Chris was trying to toughen me up. Dave just wanted to see a fight. I never benefited from the lessons initially and always, within 20 seconds, was being held up, arms out, desperately trying to get my breath back. Andy, despite being a tall oafish boy, had surgeon-like precision when trying to land a crushing blow to my abdomen, putting pressure on the solar plexus causing temporary paralysis of the diaphragm.
I should back up. Before Andy and his family moved in across the street I pretty much had zero friends. Shawn, who was my best friend since the first day of kindergarten, and I had faded apart. I was still too young for the older guys and the younger kids were, well, still too young. The difference between 14 and 12 is not as big as say, 11 and 9, in terms of childhood friendships.
The older couple a few houses down began letting me play basketball in their driveway. I had been playing by myself for months by the time the day came that Andy moved in. That afternoon he came over, introduced himself and we started a game. Within fifteen minutes he had me on the ground. The first in my daily dose of dirt. He never really hurt me. Mostly he would pin me to the ground, twist my arm and of course knock the wind out of me. We fought at the bus stop, on the bus, at recess, on the way home after school, before, during and after any game and pretty much anytime he felt like it. The day he came into the yard and began throwing mine and my sister’s bikes and toys around my dad told me I better beat the crap out of that kid soon. Around that time Chris, who had tired of being a promoter of adolescent cock fights, had taken me under his wing. I started out on the heavy bag. Then, in a display of rural machismo and gross health code violations, he had me toughen my knuckles on a deer carcass hanging from the garage rafters.
This is the only time I my fist has ever damaged another person’s face. It is also the last fight I have ever been in. Andy and I were playing three man football with Jacob. Jacob now finally being old enough to play with us, we played in his big back yard. As per our usual script a dispute over something trivial set us off. This time though, it was different. It was better. It was a heart swelling moment. All the power of a swarm of prepubescent boys channeled through me. Like an early twentieth century medium singing with the voices of the discarnate. It was not me, it was all of us. No wrestling, no dancing around. One swing and that was it.
Later that afternoon Andy’s mom came over to confront my dad about what happened. My dad never went over there after my previous eleven hundred losses. I was still a boy shining with pride as I listened to my dad apologize and then make me apologize, an empty hearted bit of ceremony to appear reasonably adult about breaking my ‘friend’s’ nose. I was appalled when the door shut, my dad immediately yelling at me for what I had done. I guess I just did not feel like reminding him I did as he told me to do.
I have had a tendency in the past to remember dreams I had as a child as actual real-life memories. One of those was the time we were driving over the rail road tracks at the crossing in Griffith. If you have never been there, it at one time held a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most rail road tracks at one crossing. We had driven over that crossing hundreds of times and I had always wished we could pull off the road and follow the tracks. I just wanted to see where they go. One time my mom threw our safety and the delicate nature of our vehicle aside and went off-roading in the Monza. As a teenager I asked my mom if she remembered that. She tilted her head and released a series of quizzical looks before we figured out the truth. I had dreamt the entire adventure. Now that I think about it I am not completely positive that I did not dream the teenage conversation as well. It interesting trying to tell stories from my childhood when not even I can distinguish what are fiction and what is real. Well, enjoy.
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