A Wise Fool

47

Entering my second year of high school, how would I fare?

My Sophomore year of High School promised great things. All but two classes were mostly based on knowledge of subject matter, not pages of hand written endurance, and my computer programming ability sky-rocketed to surpass anything we had ever found in a magazine.

Oh, and those two classes? The same teacher taught both. They were English focused, one quarter long only classes. 'Horror and Fantasy' was taught by the original eighth grade teacher from Middle School, though I had the new English teacher that year so I actually hadn't met him previously, just knew of him. 'Horror and Fantasy' started out with a week of discussion about what horror was, versus fantasy. Horror was pretty straight forward, but Fantasy, he had to clarify, was not the Kings, Elves and Hobbits which had come to swamp the term, but any story set in an unrealistic location where the story is to take place. The brief example he gave us was: A guy walking across a desert, we don't know why or where he came from, comes to a giant featureless wall blocking his way. With no door, but not wanting to stray from his intended path, he doesn't know what to do.

With that as the example story, the grist left in the reader's lap was 'What do these images represent?' Perhaps the journey across the desert is the course of life and the impassible wall the barrier of death? Or perhaps the story intends for us to not get too fixed in our ways and except a change of course when there is no other choice? Etc.

Now with the twin genres defined, the class plan would have us read three books of our choosing from a list, then write a one page report of what we read. The Final would be a secret until the last weeks, but focus on what we'd learnt during the class. As I enjoyed reading, this class was great for me as it gave me a reason to stray from my normal focus on Science Fiction, and a single hand written page about every two weeks was perfect for me as well. When the Final came, we were told our grade for the class would be based purely on what we got as our score on the Final. And for it, we had to write a four page paper choosing either Horror or Fantasy and define and discuss the genre and its meaning. This seemed simple enough and even though it was four pages with only three days to do it, I had polished my one draft writing skills to an art and had no trouble completing it in time. I chose Horror.

We turned in our papers and had a day to ourselves and he would give the papers back with our grade the following day. When that day came he returned our papers with a surprise twist, he said one of us had written a paper saying that Horror and Fantasy were one and the same and he had found it so convincing that he had decided it was the only right answer and any one of us who didn't have that as the conclusion of our paper had it wrong. In this case, that girl got an 'A' for the class and the rest of us a lowly 'B'. The premise that he had set-up beforehand for the paper had been chucked-out and for those of us not psychic enough to know he would do this ahead of time, we were screwed. This shocked me as I had otherwise enjoyed the class up to this point, but I hoped this was just an aberration and things would go better in the English class I had with him next quarter.

'Basic Composition' was just that. He was going to teach us how to write well. He felt the best way to learn how to write was to have us write and then he would read our papers and mark everything wrong with them, and that's how we'd learn. This didn't sound promising, but my one draft writing style hadn't found detractors during the previous years. He wanted us to do a two page paper on any topic we chose and do an outline, rough draft, then a final draft for him that first week. I picked my topic and turned in my 'final draft' on Thursday. He rejected it because he required the outline and rough draft along with the final draft. oh. I said I hadn't realized that and I'd bring those in from home tomorrow. At home that night I did the trick as I had in eighth grade English where I made a shorter, poorer version of the paper in pencil and made the outline based on my pen draft. It was more than I normally could do in a night, but I pushed off all homework for other classes to get it done and turned everything in that Friday. I reflected that I could probably squeak by with this class given the format each week. The Monday when he returned our marked-up papers, he told us that he now wanted us to do this every two days. I assumed, given the quantity of paperwork involved, he would only be wanting the final draft. Nope, he wanted it all, once every two days and I knew I was screwed.

After two weeks of killing myself to get this amount done once every three days, he wouldn't even look at them as there had been too much time between the papers. An 'F' was guaranteed and so I went to the guidance counselor's office to withdraw from the class and, as it was a required class, reschedule it with another teacher in one of the last two quarters of the year. The counselor refused to let me do it on the basis that he was sure I wasn't going to do that badly in the class. I assured him I would, so he offered the compromise of waiting until after the quarter and he'd contact me then if it was going to be a problem. Fine, I agreed. The end of the quarter came as well as the 'F'. I didn't hear back from the counselor.

All other classes went well.

Math was again with Zack Hatch: 'Transformational Geometry'. The 'Advanced Algebra' students from the Freshman year of High School got to chose one of two geometry focused math classes, Zack had put in a recommendation for me so I could skip up from 'Intro To Algebra' and join the geometry level this year. Given how well I liked the previous year with Zack teaching, I chose the Sophomore year class that had him. And it went great; again I was at the top of the class, and this time when he sang my praises in front of the class it was with the kids who were already deemed to be pretty sharp.

The daring optional class I took this year was 'Spanish I'.

In eighth grade we had the chance to take a language class of 'French' or 'Latin' instead of having a study hall period. I took 'Latin' as I knew it was often used in science circles and I was still fantasizing that I'd be involved with the space program one day. But after the first quarter of 'Latin' class in eighth grade, I showed up on the first day of the second quarter and the teacher was surprised I was there. She told me I was no longer in 'Latin' class, hadn't my parents told me? No. Well, I was no longer taking 'Latin' class. I asked why, the teacher wouldn't tell me, she just asked me to leave so she could start teaching the class.

So now, two years later, I again signed-up for a language class. 'Spanish I' was a nice mix of learning & writing, listening & understanding, and thinking & talking. I did very well as I excelled at understanding the language and translating back and forth. In many ways I saw it as a computer language to learn, except you used it with people rather than type it in on a keyboard. Sure, I stuttered occasionally when speaking Spanish, but understanding the language was the teacher's focus. I was so thrilled by my first year of the language I signed right up for 'Spanish II' the following year.

In fact, my Sophomore year of High School had gone so well I enthusiastically signed up for all the courses I could for Junior year. I even found I could squeeze in the 'Civics' class intended for Seniors into my schedule. The administration intervened, saying I should take a different social studies class and hold off on that one until my final year. I pointed out I was already taking the other, shorter social studies classes but, as I had a free period all year and there was still room available for 'Civics' after all the Seniors had signed-up for it, I wanted to take it. And why couldn't I take it early?

They didn't address my question, instead pointing out that I could use the free period for study hall time. In the previous two years, I hadn't used study hall time for study but instead playing with the school's computer, so I hadn't seen any need for a study hall. But then, on reflection, I decided to relent and take study hall instead.

It would give me time to play more computer games at school.

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Landing A Catch

46

By December Nineteen Seventy-Nine, my father was spending time away from the home during some evenings. It turned out he'd found himself a girl friend, the first in several years. He excitedly confessed to me that 'Roberta' was the hot girl of his High School class and she was now available and he thought he had a chance whereas, back then, he didn't. Seeing her as a sort of Red Neck Princess, as part of his method of wooing her he suddenly bought and wore long sleeved red plaid flannel shirts. As he had never worn anything like it during my life time, I had to fight back the urge to laugh every time I saw him 'dressed-up' like that as it reminded me of the Monty Python 'Lumber Jack' song.

When Christmas came and it was time to see my mother, I put all of my clothes back into the one suitcase I had come to New England with and wore the old puffy jacket to the airport and carried it with me on the plane. Once set down in Colorado, my mother thought it was time I got a new coat.

In the intervening few months she had moved to a new, one bedroom, apartment and this meant my stuff was gone. She told me how she gave away all my games and toys since I hadn't wanted them anymore. Whatever made her sleep at night. I was gung-ho to sleep on the couch, but she had bought a roll away bed for me to use during the week and a half I'd be there. Also, she seemed to hope that my not as older brother would come down Christmas Eve and stay overnight on the couch himself. The roll away was more of a steel trap; both ends would fold-up making it a four foot high, two foot thick and three foot wide cage. With the ends folded down 'it was a bed', though with the steel hinge base smack in the middle, it was more of a torture device. I found the only way to sleep on it was on my side with my hips just beyond the steel bar and ribs just above it. It was like sleeping in the back of the car, except less comfortable.

Mother had found a new grocery store to work in since the one she'd started at just four months earlier. As she was working all but Christmas day, this meant I got to enjoy the apartment and its surroundings... Mainly just empty weed fields on the eastern outskirts of town. I somehow talked her into picking me up during her lunch hour and taking me to the Radio Shack of the previous Summer where Ralph worked and was happy to see me again and let me use the display Trash-80, still with the desk. I'd spend the afternoon there, then mother would pick me back up on the way home from work. For this small accommodation during my stay, I thank her. Not wanting to wear out my welcome, I was doing every other day there and on the second afternoon a large man stepped up behind me as I tried out a game I'd just coded. He said, ''Hey, if you think that's cool, you should come over to my place and see the games I have...''

Given his long hair and long beard, he could have been mistaken for a biker except that he wore jeans and a tee shirt. I told him I had to wait for my mother to pick me up at four thirty, but he assured me he'd have me back by then. So I gathered my things and hopped into his truck off to his house. Once there, he lead me up some steps to an older house in the downtown area, inside he brought me to a dark room in the middle of the base floor and had me go in first. He turned on the light which was pretty much a bulb hanging by a chain from the middle of the ceiling -- For some reason, when I tell this story nowadays, people start to get really nervous and cringe for fear of what happens next, but I need to explain that I was from rural New England and my parents had never expressed any concern about me talking with people I didn't know -- So anyhow, we get down on these really low seats, it might have actually been some cushions on the floor, and on this coffee table was a fully tricked-out Trash-80. By fully tricked-out I mean it had the Expansion Interface, this clucking box to the side called a floppy drive, whatever that was, and a printer.

Turned-out the floppy drive was a much faster cassette recorder for loading and saving games. And he loaded-up and showed me quite a few. Many of them were the text based games that I'd seen before, some called 'adventure games' where it gave you the description of a room and you got to either pick up or leave stuff there, then move to another room. But some were graphics oriented and more dynamic than anything I'd seen before on a computer. Behind the computer he had a few cassettes of a game called 'Interlude' and I asked him what that was, but he felt I was too young to see those games. When I noticed we'd passed three thirty, I mentioned I needed to get back to the Radio Shack before my mother got there.

So he got me back to the store a bit after four and stayed with me noting the many other games he had while I settled back down into the display desk. I expressed enthusiasm and he gave me his number and I wrote down his name at the top, 'Jeff'. He left soon after and not knowing how long I'd have to wait until mother arrived, I started to load the game I had been working on. When she came, I hopped in the car and, as we were driving to the apartment, I told her of my exciting day and she just about had a heart attack and told me I should never have left the store and gone with someone I didn't know. I told her I did know him, now, and had his name and phone number. Once back at the apartment, mother promptly snatched the phone number from me and gave him a call to give him a piece of her mind. When Jeff mentioned to her that he was married, mother asked to talk to his wife and soon calmed down. She said I could see him again the Saturday before I flew home that Sunday. But I was told in no uncertain terms: When at the Radio Shack I was to stay there until she picked me up!!!!

I did see Jeff that Saturday and picked some cassette based games to see. As we waited for them to load, we'd chat and he showed me his record collection of all these bands I hadn't heard of before; he would play a few songs off of one as he pointed out a few prized albums to me. A few hours later, it was time to go, have a final meal with my mother and pack for the flight home.

My father and Roberta picked me up at Logan airport and brought me back to the house. Once there I was surprised with the present my father had gotten me for Christmas. It was soft under the wrapping, not like a box with paper over it. I eagerly ripped the wrapping-off to find it was a set of long sleeve red plaid flannel shirts. My hands shook in revulsion as it dawned on me that this wasn't a present from my father, but a present for my father as he apparently thought he needed me to 'dress-up' as a lumber jack as well to finally land his catch.

I dropped the plastic wrapped shirts to the nearest side table and mumbled that I had to go and unpack my suitcase and fled the room. The shirts lay untouched on that side table for the next three to four months collecting dust until they finally, thankfully, disappeared.

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Time For A Wedding

45

Barely a month after I got back to New England, I found we had to scramble to get ready for a wedding. After living together for many years, my eldest brother and his long time girl friend had decided to tie the knot. And this was when I found out that his girl friend, 'Lucy', was from a more well to do family. I heard there had been some horror on the part of her father that his daughter was settling down with a 'ski bum', though by that time my brother was starting to work his way up into the leadership of a competing ski area. A compromise was struck where we would have to participate in a seemingly Kennedyesque wedding that had originally been envisioned for his daughter, in return he would give his blessing.

There was a panicked need to get me to a formal clothing store so when I was introduced to the father of the bride, it wouldn't be in my jeans and tee. The last thing I needed was more confining layers of clothing to make me hotter, but my protests were for nothing. Looking over the suits to be had in my size, they all looked pretty much the same, except for one. Growing up I had alternated between jeans and corduroy pants as a kid, and one of the suits available was a three piece beige corduroy suit, with vest. I figured the material was thick enough that I could wear it without the need of the ACE bandage and at least cool myself down a little bit. We were now ready for the great migration.

My not as older brother flew back from Colorado to participate and we car pooled our way to the Massachusetts coastline to prepare. Once established at the inn, a few steps above any motel I'd ever been to, we were whisked off to the suit rental shop for our fittings. Not quite a tuxedo as I had seen on television, it was more of a black tailcoat with shiny lapels and a grey vest with a black and grey striped tie secured with a pearl topped stick pin. Along with all the associated cufflinks for the shirt, there was also a black cummerbund but this never showed so I was sure its true purpose was to assure heat stoke. This would be the uniform for me, my not as older brother, and my eldest brother's friends as we would act as the ushers during the ceremony. I believe my eldest brother and father were similarly attired, but there might have been some variation as they were the groom and father of the groom. While my paternal grandfather Pappy also attended, I don't remember if he was similarly dressed up as we had been, or if given his Boston Banker background he already had appropriate clothing for such an upscale occasion.

Back to the hotel briefly to change into our less formal formal duds we were off to Lucy's parents' house to meet them and then we'd have dinner after the rehearsal. Arriving along with other guests, we were met at the door and introduced, then we stood aside in the foyer as more guests arrived and Lucy's father introduced us to them. As in Colorado, where people who didn't know me took me as they saw me, he got my name right but introduced as one of the bridesmaids, despite my beige corduroy suit. Perhaps he thought I was wearing it in support of the Equal Rights Amendment of the time? After my many experiences in Colorado that previous Summer, I had learned the best way to handle these moments was with a little humor so I raised my index finger and put on my best perplexed face and said, ''Ah, excuse me?'' Everyone burst out in laughter and the moment passed without recriminations or further awkwardness.

As more guests came, Lucy lead us through the large family home, rich with carved wood detailings, and told us a few anecdotes from her childhood. One that I remember was that, inspired by the communion ritual at their church, she and her sister one time got home to pull out some dinner rolls and squish them flat to make their own communion wafers for play. She also showed us the dining room and pointed out the smaller, lower down table in the corner and talked about her times at the children's dinner table and how she was thrilled when she was old enough to gain a chair at the adult table. This story was a gentle way of introducing me to where I would be seated. This out of the limelight placement suited me just fine though, but at age fifteen the small chairs themselves didn't. Once assembled, we went to a rented space for the wedding rehearsal, before returning for the dinner. When done, there was a little meet-and-greet amongst us as we trickled out over time to our various hotels and motels.

The wedding itself was at a church that we were told members of the Kennedy family had been to on occasion, classic medieval stone masonry with great oak pews. As ushers, we were directed to lead arriving guests to sit evenly on either side of the church for fear that the groom's side might otherwise be a little spare, but surprisingly there was a good turn-out for both sides of the family and the church filled up quite nicely. Despite the emotional distance between my father and my eldest brother, he had asked our father to be his best man. Our father had spent many years living on his own at the family home given that Pappy had his own apartment to spend most of his time in, so the role of best man was offered to him to give dad a participating place at the wedding, rather than being lost in the pews. The music started, my father and eldest brother waited at the alter with another groomsman, and Lucy came in: She made an elegant bride. Accompanied by flower girls dropping pedals along the way, Lucy processed down the the center nave aisle to reach the altar and join her three bridesmaids, her sister and two friends. Having been to a handful of other weddings with my mother over the years, this one seemed straight out of a movie as the vows were taken and the permission to kiss the bride given.

The wedding done, we were off to the family's Yacht Club for the reception. A huge oceanside stone building with a full flight of steps leading up to the entryway, it was decked out with the first room for the gift collection and to have the cake on display. A large adjoining side room was used for the hors d'oeuvres and dinner tables. While the main room did have a set of stairs leading to the upper floor, the reception was only on the main floor and included a smaller side room next to the entry. While not officially part of the event rooms, its glass doors were unlocked and served as a quiet place to decompress from the formality of the affair. Some of my brother's friends from rural New England had a little fun showing each other the 'proper way' of handling the food and addressing each other in the Yacht Club. I milled about the various rooms soaking up the atmosphere and observed the gathered people visiting each other and watching the married couple as the dinner commenced. I noticed that the flower girls had settled into the side room and joined them for a chat. They had been with me at the children's table during the rehearsal dinner, so this gave us a bit of familiarity and we chatted for a bit. Well, given my stuttering, I mostly listened.

We were summoned for the cutting of the cake and I got to have a slice. Afterwards, I noticed my not as older brother and one of the groomsmen friends sneaking outside. I followed. Along with another friend of my brothers, we went to a local pharmacy were they got 'various supplies' to help adorn the chauffeured car for the married couple. Returning to the club, we quietly made our way to the car, then they used shaving cream to add detailing and condoms to whatever external car fitting would hold them. We returned to the reception and stayed until it was time for the tossing of the bouquet; the women assembled at the foot of the flight of stairs leading into the Yacht Club and the bouquet tossed. Then it was time for the men to assemble at the base of the stairs for the tossing of the garter. While told to go down with them, I took to standing far back and to the side so I'd be well out of reach of anything tossed.

Once the married couple were off in their car, we made our way to our own cars and returned to the hotel. There, we could finally get out of our tuxedos and back into our regular clothing. We stayed the night, then car pooled back to our family home the next day.

And normality was restored.

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Release

44

Moving back to the family home, I guess I had expected, would be like returning to how things were fours years earlier before mother pulled me away to the apartment town. Here I was in the house I'd spent all but fours years of my life in, but my bedroom was gone. I was back in the same town that my friends had originally been in, yet the age of after-school-play-dates was over with. In fact my two closest friends at the time, Van and Luke didn't live within walking distance and, without public transportation existing or being old enough for a drivers license, the best I could do was call them on the phone and say ''Hi.''

My first day back from Colorado, after sleeping on the unmade bed, I searched the upstairs and found where the sheets were kept and some old blankets. I found a pillow as well, stuffed on the upper shelf of a closet. My father had gone off to work so I spent the morning learning how to use the washing machine. My eldest brother's bed, while made, hadn't been used for a long time and could use a stripping and washing, too.

With this under my belt, I called my friend Jonathan to let him know I was back in town. As the years had progressed, his father had curtailed his social time during the school year to a minimum to ensure his son would be fully devoted to his studies after school, so seeing Jonathan had become more of a summer time or school break opportunity. With my cassette of computer programs in hand and him having a Trash-80 computer of his own at home, I gave him a call to see if he was interested and available? He was and he and his mother were kind enough to pick me up. While we talked a bit of Colorado, we mostly focused on the games I brought and listening to the new music albums he'd gotten over the Summer. This would become an annual first day back from Colorado event for the next few years.

Getting home, I made the beds, mine and my eldest brother's. I found my old bedroom desk and chair had been moved to the white bedroom when my father had otherwise tossed everything else over the Summer, so I moved that into the new bedroom I was in. At first unsure where to put the desk, I came up with the idea of placing it in the closet. As I didn't need it for clothes, I had the suit case after all, I could use the closet as a study nook. The desk slipped nicely into the portion of the closet with the sloped ceiling and the closet had a window to the side allowing me to look out and ponder as need be. Over time, I found a spare plastic laundry basket in the basement. It was partially melted on one side, I assume from being left too closely to the baseboard heater at some point, but still it held clothes just fine so I replaced the suit case with the basket to hold my clothes.

That weekend I got a flash of memory and went to the closet of the white bedroom. At the foot of its closet was the door to the additional storage space. Opening it, I found the box I had squirreled away there as a kid. Inside were a number of childhood keepsakes from years earlier, such as a musket ball, which I had been keeping safe from my mother's hands. Now sorting through this box, much of it no longer held much meaning for me, but it was a connection to my past. So even though my bedroom and its contents were gone, I still had something which affirmed that this was my place and I belonged here.

Labor Day Monday, just before the start of school the next day, I noted to dad that mother had given me a dollar a day to pay for school lunch. While in reality she hadn't and I'd been using my own work money for that, I got the desired results of a five dollar bill each week. One of mother's oversights of the move to Colorado was that she didn't have me close-out my bank account as she had done with hers. As a result my saved money was still in New England except with one small wrinkle. The branch bank I had used was twenty miles away at the apartment town, and the main branch of the bank twenty-five miles away at the larger town nearby. My money was safe, but from me as well. One day in the Fall, I was walking along the shopping strip front toward the drug store and noticed a small room had been added just passed the hardware store windows, but before their outdoor garden lot. It had the logo of my bank, but just had a machine inside. It turned out it was an 'automated bank machine' and I called the main branch to find out about it, one of the early versions of the Automated Teller Machine we know today, they mailed me the paperwork to apply for a card to use it and then they sent me the bank machine card. I once again had access to my money.

So by Fall, I'd settled into my new life. My new bedroom was for sleeping, reading and school work, my eldest brother's room was for listening to music as it still had the original component stereo and some left behind albums, it also worked for reading as well. But unlike the years living with my mother at the apartment, my father neither spent hours each day telling me how terrible everyone else was, nor giving me the occasional hit, and Pappy kept mostly to himself as well. This allowed me time to emotionally decompress. Sometimes I'd sit at the desk in the closet and stare out the window, other times I'd just wander the woods and fields surrounding the house and soak in the peacefulness. As a stoke of luck, the ski area the previous year had added some cross country skiing trails and I had taken my skies and shoes to the park one weekend just before Spring to try them out. As a result, the skis and shoes were at the family home when my mother packed everything up for the move to Colorado, and so I had them with me and could use them in the surrounding woods and fields once the snows came.

Then one day in Fall, I'd gotten cocky while doing the laundry. During the two years of wearing the ACE bandage around my chest, it had never been washed. In fact, I doubt my mother had washed it after she had originally used it for her dislocated knee a decade earlier. I was unaware of hand washing at the time and I had only just figured out how to machine wash, so I thought I'd toss it in with the bedsheets one weekend. Once the machine was done, I found that the bandage had gotten caught up in the auger and stretched and pulled apart. Once the rest of the laundry was in the dryer, I struggled to get the ACE bandage debris out of the machine and finally did, but it was unsalvageable and I was panicked. I had become so used to using it to bind my beasts down and keep them from showing that I now had no clue how I could get another ACE bandage without being in public with my breasts bobbing through my shirt. It was a chicken and egg problem.

Then a solution occurred to me: In the room with the dryer was the family coat rack. As the years went on, once one coat was no longer being used by a family member it ended up forgotten on the coat rack with the new coat being added to the hanger next to it. As a result, over these many years, there was a selection of tattered coats just hanging there. In fact, as my mother hadn't packed-up my own winter coat for my return to New England, I'd have to pick one out of this rack once Winter came anyhow. I looked through what was there, most were torn or badly worn, but I found one light blue, down coat with its billowy surface that would fit me. Given its puffy shape, it hid what was underneath very well and, even though it was still Fall, I figured it was cold enough outside to get away with wearing it.

I walked to the drug store to pick up a new bandage and visit the money machine on the way there. Over the two years of using the ACE bandage around my breasts and not washing it, I'd developed quite the acne patch over my chest. I had become quite good at ignoring it in public as it itched, and it occurred to me that as I was picking up the bandage I could get some acne cream as well. When I got to the drug store counter, the clerk gave me an odd look. While some of it might have been due to me wearing the puffy winter jacket in Fall, I think it was mostly because of the handful of acne cream tubes I had brought to the counter along with the bandage. She looked at my face and didn't think I'd need so much; I froze as I didn't know what to say. As she was waiting for an answer, I stuttered out something about having some on hand for later.

At the time I was the only customer there and she left the cash register and had me follow her. I was sweating, not only from wearing the jacket as I followed her, but not knowing what this meant or what was going to happen. She brought me to a shelf and picked out a bottle of witch hazel and then snatched a pack of cotton balls on the way back. She explained that the witch hazel would work just as well and would cost pennies per bottle, rather than the dollars worth of acne cream tubes I had picked out. Transaction done, I returned home and coated my chest with the witch hazel and tried out the new clean ACE bandage. It also came with a little note of instructions talking about hand washing which I kept in mind for the future.

I also kept the puffy jacket in mind as well. During the first year of High School some students, rather than trying to stuff their winter coats into the little cubbyholes we had in place of lockers, would just wear the jackets all day in class, unzipped. When the snows came, I decided to be daring and do this too, but in reality this was so I could be out in public without the ACE bandage strapping me down. During the previous years with the bandage, I had kept to wearing tee shirts all year long to let the pent-up heat leave my body through my bare arms. Now with the jacket on, but no bandage, it really wasn't all that much hotter than what I'd been used to. I started to do this trick a couple times a week just for a change of pace.

Once December came, my father told me I'd be going back to see my mother for Christmas break. When I arrived in Colorado wearing the old puffy jacket, my mother was appalled and insisted I have a new one. I at first protested, but then agreed as long as I got to pick it out. I did and made sure it was another concealing jacket.

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Displacement

43

Discovering she was going to be living in Colorado indefinitely, how would my mother get me to stay with her?

By the middle of August, mother decided she should job hunt now that she was living in Colorado, it seemed Joe might need a few extra months to realize how much he missed her. She found a job at a downtown supermarket and began a regular work routine after having two months off.

Meanwhile, I reminded her that I would be going back to New England to continue High School. This was a great thing to note on my end as it wasn't like I had a plane ticket, or any means of getting to an airport. In fact I only realize now how tenuous my return was as all she had to do was not buy a plane ticket, or not let me know dad had sent her one for me, and I would be trapped.

With her working, I pretty much stayed to the same routine of writing code at home and trying it out three days a week at the local Radio Shack. By the end of the Summer I had five working computer programs under my belt and saved to tape. The reason my friend Jonathan had sought out the TRS-80 Computer in school was because his father had bought him one as part of preparing him for his eventual career as an Engineer. As a result I was eagerly anticipating my return to New England so I could show off the games I had created over the summer break.

With the end of August rapidly approaching, mother took her new found earnings and tried to woo me to stay in Colorado by giving me money to buy a number of record albums. She also bought me a customized bed; as I reached my early teens, I had neared my adult height of just under six feet tall. This left my feet and head bumping into the head and foot boards of the bunk beds and I had taken up sleeping crouched sideways to fit. The bed mother had built for me was longer than the typical twin bed. The good news was I could lie flat in it and my feet wouldn't be hanging over the end, the bad news was stores didn't have sheets that size for sale, so mother took the more worn sheets from my bunk bed days and cut them up into quarters. She then sewed them to the end of the better looking sheets, thus giving me sets long enough to fit the bed. She made sure all the sown-on pieces were at the foot of the bed so they'd be hidden by the blanket and comforter, but when lying on the bed I'd feel the sown ridges against my calves and I had to be careful sliding my legs in and out of the bed less my toe nails catch.

She further made sure she and I filled-in my bedroom by unpacking everything, getting it nicely in the closet, hung on the walls, on the shelves and generally make the new apartment's bedroom everything I'd want in a bedroom. She then started talking about where I'd go to school. I reminded her that I was returning to New England for school. She then started to openly lobby me to stay as she didn't want to be alone. I reminded her of my not as older brother living nearby in Denver but she said she had been disappointed that he hadn't visited more often. I think he had come at least once every other week which seemed more often than when we lived at the New England apartment, but in reality what she meant was she didn't want to be in a town where she knew no one and she wouldn't even have me anymore as her unwilling confidante.

I assured her that I was going back to New England to finish school. So she then tried the threatening path. If I went back to New England, I would lose everything! All my stuff, all my books, all my games, all my record albums, my stereo, etc. All I'd have to take back with me was one suitcase of clothes. I felt that was a fair deal in return for finishing High School with the friends I had known for all my years. Further, I already had my bedroom at dad's house with much of my stuff in it and, most importantly to me at the time, I had the cassette tape of my computer programs. For me, it was the true measure of what I had gained during that first Summer in Colorado. But I didn't share any of this with her, I just said: ''Okay.''

I don't know who bought the airplane ticket back to New England for me. And in fact, during all my summers visiting mother in Colorado I never knew who did, but I suspected there was a little trade-off between the parents. The Wednesday before Labor day I stopped by the Radio Shack one last time and said goodbye to Ralph and the new guy who'd recently joined the store. Mother actually made dinner for us that night and I packed my one allowed suit case, cassette tape hidden inside and I was taken to the airport. The flight back was, thankfully, non-stop so I didn't have to worry about changing planes, this being my first flight alone. Father met me at the gate in Logan airport, and drove me home.

It was a quiet drive back to the home town and I was so thankful to be getting back. As we arrived at the house and I got my suitcase out of the back of the car, this was when my father mentioned that I would need to stay in another bedroom, now. During the Summer, he had emptied out my family home bedroom to make it his library. He had mounted all the walls with board and bracket shelves and his science fiction book collection was now housed there. This stunned me as I hadn't expected to come home to find my bedroom was gone. All my belongings in it, he had gotten rid off. No trace remained. Despite the fact that the adjoining bedroom next to his was the empty white room where my eldest brother had sketched the nude on the wall six years earlier, my father didn't use that. My eldest brother's original bedroom, that even my not as older brother hadn't used for over the past two years, that remained untouched as well. The empty bedroom that had originally been my sister's, then my mother's and eventually my not as older brother's during his last year living at the house, my father hadn't used that room either even though all it had was the bed frame and bare mattress.

It was that last bedroom that my father pointed me to as the place where I could stay. My eldest brother's bedroom was right next door as a ready to use bedroom, but as I'd been pointed to the room with the bare bed, that's where I went to. As my father picked me up late at the airport given the two hour difference between Colorado time and New England time, it was after dinner and Pappy was already watching evening shows in his apartment, if not to bed, so there was little to do but go to bed, myself.

But as I was on Colorado time, I wasn't sleepy at all. I looked out the bedroom window for a bit, the same one I had first spied the haying machines from twelve years earlier, but the hayfield was too dark to make out anything. Instead my eyes were drawn to the main grocery store lights peaking through the trees beyond and the edge of the shopping strip that had been built next to the store during the intervening years. After a while, not knowing where any bedsheets or pillows might be kept and not wanting to disturb my father who had gone to bed, I just curled up on the bare mattress and tucked my elbow under my temple for a pillow.

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A New Hope

42

With the move to Colorado, the question was: What was my mother's ultimate goal?

My mother used a moving company for our belongings in part because there would be a week long gap between the time we left New England and the time we were in the apartment. With the moving company, she could have them place our stuff into holding for two weeks, then finish delivering it to us in July. The problem was, once in holding, there was a strike and we were just a pair of a vast group of people who suddenly discovered they would have to make do with what they'd taken with them. For us, it was a small black & white television, two sleeping bags and what we fit into our luggage to last two weeks.

It was kind of odd to have a bedroom all to oneself and you're to one side with your sleeping bag looking over the far reach of the carpet at floor level. Needless to say, our laundry went into a frequent washing rotation. Unlike the old complex, this apartment complex had roughly three times the number of buildings and each building had three times the number of apartments. For 'entertainment' I would roam the complex and get the lay of the land. It had a pool, but it was always busy so my using it was out of the question. Next to the pool, though, was a club house with a coin operated pool table and pinball machine. Having never played pinball, only hearing about it in one of my brother's 'The Who' albums, I asked mother for some quarters, she gave me two. When I returned, it was in use and I watched the teenager play it for a bit. When his friend arrived, they left and I gave it a try. The two quarters went fast and when I returned to mother for more, I was told there weren't going to be any more and to find something else to do with my time.

After a couple of days of sitting on the floor, my mother got sick of it and came up with a clever idea: Rather than buy indoor furniture as ours would eventually arrive, we would buy lawn furniture! It was cheap, and we could use it indoors for the next few weeks, then move it to the little balcony once our stuff arrived. During one of our exploring car trips around our neighborhood we found a drug store, but again with the change in scale, it was at least four times the size of the largest pharmacy I'd ever been to and had some grocery aisles, electronics room, and more importantly the lawn furniture set out for sale in the entry. We picked-out two pieces, a short upright chair and a lower lounging chair. Now we had the chance to watch the black & white while sitting in the otherwise empty living room area in lawn chairs. Everything seemed so novel to me at this time.

The antenna on the T.V. didn't pick up the stations very well, but the apartment came with free 'cable', whatever that was. In rural New England, I had never heard of cable and we all just had roof mounted antennas, so this idea of a 'cable' which held all the signals that would normally be out in the air was a new concept for me. The small T.V. didn't have a cable inlet in back so my mother found out there was a Radio Shack a little ways from the apartment. On the drive I realized it was within walking distance and once there the manager, 'Ralph', helped us find the necessary adapter to attach the cable to the television. As we checked out I noticed they had two TRS-80 display computers, the typical one on a mid-chest high pillar placing the screen and keyboard at standing level for customers milling in and out. But they also had one in the display model integrated desk, with chair, looking very lonely by the window. On the way out I asked Ralph if I could come back sometime and use the computer, he said I could.

This town had five malls at the time, mind boggling as in rural New England malls were few and far between and only near the capital cities. We visited three of the malls in this new town regularly, at first so we could buy some additional clothes, but to also give us a break from the heat. Air conditioning was something only the rich people had in their cars and houses when I grew up, so there was no surprise that our first apartment, nor our Colorado one, didn't have any. To console me over not being able to play the pinball machine given its thirst for quarters, mother found me an electronic 'Master Mind' game which worked for a single player. This kept me busy for a few hours.

The next time at the drug store, I asked mother to buy me a notebook and pencils and I started to write code. Except I didn't know what I wanted the code to do. Unlike the past year taking programs out of magazines, I was starting with a blank page. Then it occurred to me to write a program that worked the same way as the mastermind game. Given the slow pace of my hand writing, it gave me plenty of time to reconsider any change my code might need as I scribed. Once done, I took the fifteen minute walk to Radio Shack and confirmed with Ralph that I could still use the computer on the desk. I could and typed in the program. To my surprise, with only one quick to find and fix bug, it worked! As the computer had a cassette recorder attached, I bought the cheapest tape they had and saved the game. I then spent the majority of my time at the apartment writing code into the notebook and then visiting the store to try it out. After a couple days in a row, Ralph encouraged me to come less often and so I made it a Monday-Wednesday-Friday afternoon trip with code writing at the apartment to tide me over between visits.

At first, to fill our time waiting for the furniture to arrive, we went to all the tourist traps in the area. On the drive into town on the interstate highway our first time, the 'Chamber of Commerce' had a stand on either side of the highway in the dirt shoulder where people could pull off and look through the fliers. We had collected quite a few then and, now these weeks later, had been going through them one by one until we ran out.

There was also another problem which horrified mom. In rural New England, where we knew everyone and everyone knew us, as puberty dawned I was still me and everyone knew it. Sure, I was a little awkward given my 'situation', but we had all been told that puberty was an awkward time and none of my friends or classmates seemed to take any particular notice. But in Colorado, where everyone was a stranger, they took me as they saw me and occasionally referred to me as my mother's daughter. This was despite the fact that my breasts continued to be strapped down with the ACE bandage. After a couple times of this, mother's solution was to have my head shaved to a military cut. This horrified me as, in the nineteen seventies, guys didn't have short hair like that anymore. Still, the times people assumed I was mom's daughter decreased, so it made her happy.

There was a problem with the new apartment, the neighbor above us owned a dog and had him use the balcony above us to 'do his business'. Urine would come down to our balcony at random times of the day, and rain storms would break-up and wash down the feces. Complaints to the neighbor or landlord didn't help. Eventually, as we still didn't have any furniture, the complex offered to let us move into a different apartment at the start of August. Mother took up that offer and soon, before my birthday, the strike had ended and our stuff was finally delivered. Well most of it, they told us that the storage warehouse had been robbed during the strike and some of our belongings stolen, like my bunk beds and gaming console. As I had long since become bored with Pong, it was no great loss for me, but mother was very upset, I don't remember what stuff of hers had gone missing.

Once the phone was installed and activated, mother quickly called Joe to let him know of her number. This lead to the once a week Friday evening phone call where Joe would be working at one of the stores late and give mother a call. On these nights, mother would make sure to be at the apartment and pensively wait near the phone for the call that eventually came. Between the first few of these calls, she explained to me her plan: The whole move to Colorado was to let Joe realize how much he missed her and needed her in his life. He would thus finally divorce his wife Dorcus and come to Colorado and sweep mom off her feet and take us back to New England!

This would happen any day, now...

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Confined And Breathless

41

Fort Collins is a city north of the Colorado state capital of Denver. After hearing about the vast size and traffic congestion of Denver from my not as older brother, mother decided that she'd move to a smaller city like Fort Collins that would still be near to him, but have a slower pace of life comparable to the various larger towns of New England.

As mother had just been looking to buy a house in the apartment town that we had lived in for the past four years, I was stunned by the news that we were moving to Colorado. Not just that, but we'd move only days after my Freshman year of High School let out. Unlike the move to the apartment town where I didn't realize I had any choice in the matter, this time I told my mother that I'd stay behind and move in with dad so I could continue school with my friends. She was speechless by this, then told me I didn't have any choice. I told her I did and she decided we'd talk about it more later. The next time I was at the old family home with dad for his mid-week days off, I told him that mom was moving to Colorado and asked if I could move in with him. He seemed surprised that I'd be willing to leave mom, but at the same time saw it as a feather in his cap if I did move back to the house full-time, thus 'choosing him over her'. I didn't care about the politics of it, I just didn't want to get stranded in another new town with no friends as when we'd first moved to the apartment town, this time over a thousand miles away from any other place to stay.

Knowing that my earlier bluff of moving in with dad was now a true option, I affirmed with mom that it was what I'd be doing. She came up with a compromise. I would move to Colorado and help her settle in, then, if I still wanted, I could fly back and live with dad for the school year. I reluctantly agreed and, soon after, packing began. I have no idea what Joe had to say when he heard the news, but it turned-out mother had a plan...

We had one day between the end of school and the moving van to make sure everything was packed up. My mother had convinced my not as older brother to fly back to New England and trade off making the drive with her. In reality he did all the driving. Most all of our belongings went into the moving van except for the small black & white T.V. and two sleeping bags which ended up in the car with me, my brother, our mother, and the luggage crammed into the trunk and the floor of the back seat. I had the back seat, itself, though with no place to put my feet, I osculated between sitting sideways across the seat with my legs stretched out, or lying on my side on the seat with my legs tucked in... For the next four days.

While we didn't have time for sight seeing during the trip, we did stop briefly at a Great Lake's beach with its tall sand dunes. Then later in the trip, once mother was settled into the motel, my not as older brother took me to see a new movie. It was 'R' rated and it was science fiction! And it blew my mind: Alien. Having the chance to see the movie made the otherwise endless days on the road worth while.

Mother had my brother go apartment hunting for her the month before while she was still in New England and he was in Denver. From those he saw and recommended, my mother had picked a two bedroom apartment that wasn't available until the first of July. Thus with about a week to kill, we spent our first night in Colorado at Denver which allowed my brother a chance to check on his apartment and have a night to sleep in his own bed. We'd found a motel nearby and I stayed behind and had the room to myself while mother and brother went to see his apartment. When he lead her back, him now in his own car and mother following in her car, she was thankful that she had decided not to live in Denver itself after her brief experience driving in it.

The following day he lead us to the interstate highway and off to mom's new home town. With the apartment unavailable, we already had reservations at a motel where mom and I would stay for a few days. We took a drive to where the new apartment was located and a brief trip downtown before my brother returned to Denver and we stayed behind. This motel had a pool and, more importantly, there was no one interested in using it; so I spent much of my first two days using the pool for hours on end. Given my 'situation', I kept my shirt on in the pool and would grab a towel from the side of the pool to bunch up and hang on the back of my neck and over my chest whenever I got in or out of the water to keep things hidden. But, it wasn't a big problem, as I said, no one else was using the pool. This was my last time in a pool or doing any swimming for that matter. And the only reason I did this for just the first two days is because I was hit with a massive case of altitude sickness.

Crushing pain in my head and chest, I winced with every breath. Had I known I needed to get used to the altitude ahead of time, I wouldn't have spent the first two days holding my breath in the pool. Now it was time to pay the piper and I lay in bed for the whole following day and most of the next. By the fifth day my chest and head no longer hurt badly and I could walk around again without leaning on the walls and furniture. Mother went off to see if the apartment would be ready in time and left behind some money so I could walk to the local supermarket and get some food.

Up till then I had known two supermarkets during my lifetime, the branch and the much larger main store that Joe owned, but the store up the street from the motel was about half again the size of both of those stores combined. I roamed the endless aisles and ducked oversized shopping carts being pushed by the bustling people inside. I finally found the deli section and discovered that I had to take a number rather than wait in line, another first for me. With no menu, I had no idea what to ask for once my number was called and the girl had to lead me through how to order a sandwich: Bread, meat, cheese? Back at the motel I found I had enough sandwich to last me two meals. Even though not in Denver itself, there was a different scale to life in Colorado that I would have to get used to.

Finally, the new apartment was ready and we left the motel to move into the empty rooms. We had a black & white T.V., two sleeping bags, and our luggage as the Summer commenced.

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