What Am I?

72

Now, on the very rare occasions when I decide to tell someone about my background, I've figured out a quick statement that both gives them the gist and puts them in my place at age thirteen: ''I thought I was a boy and when puberty came, I got a big surprise.'' I've found that one sentence very effective, without having to get into the physical details to explain things. Details that I had to admit I'm not terribly comfortable talking about and most people are even less comfortable hearing from me. But that one sentence took me almost twenty years to come up with and thirteen of those years I was trying to figure out the answer myself.

With the return to New England in Nineteen Eighty-Two, the living arrangements were much the same as the previous year. Father was living at his girl friend's house and would come to the family home for five evenings a week to share dinner with Pappy and evening television shows. By October, Pappy was again off to Florida to snowbird and with him gone, dad found little reason to visit the house except to pick up the accumulated mail once every now and then. This left me with the house to myself and also the monthly utility bills, the good news there was, with the greater income from the full time job, I could better afford them and used the heating for the full house this year, rather than just my single bedroom.

With my friends all off to College, I had plenty of time to reflect.

At first the loneliness was bone aching, but as I'd gone through similar patches during my first Summer at the apartment town and similar first Summer in Colorado, I now knew these periods would come to an end, eventually, and it didn't drown me like that first time at age ten. And so I spent more time thinking about my life and about my 'situation'.

Over the years I'd watch any television show that might shed some light, typically these were the daytime talk shows and before the nineteen nineties they were still pretty straight-laced in their approach and the audience members thoughtful in their reactions. Ultimately, none of them shed any light on my 'situation', but I did end up learning quite a bit about homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals. One of the first things I learned, though, was that most people in society were dumbfounded by it all.

During the seventies when talk shows would come on to discuss being Gay, many American audience members would struggle to understand it as they only had the one box in their head, heterosexual, so they tried to find someway to get Gay people 'in the box' by asking them ''So which one is the man and which one is the woman?'' This sort of mind set made producers seek-out Gay couples where one was obviously masculine and the other feminine. This helped the audience grasp the concept more easily as it spoke to their own existing world view, even if it wasn't accurate to the full spectrum of homosexuality. With transsexuals, audience members seemed to grasp this more readily unless the person being interviewed expected to be homosexual after surgery, then the audience members would really be stunned as they tried to wrap their heads around it. When it came to transvestites, the common response was, ''What's the point?'

Eventually a second box was formed in the public mind, 'Straight' for heterosexuals, and 'Gay' for everything else. Let's call this a stage one understanding. Homosexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, pedophiles, anything other than heterosexual were all deemed 'Gay'.

Toward the late nineteen seventies and into the early eighties, when discussing these things through the talk shows, eventually the audience members reflected more sophistication on these issues as they were now able to understand that there was more than just a catch-all box of 'Gay' and they could now see that there was more than just heterosexual and homosexual, there was also the 'Other' category. The general public could now see that homosexuality was 'same sex' interest and everything else wasn't. This was a mixed blessing as they would now lump same sex pedophiles in with homosexuals, everything that was left over fell into the 'Other' box, even opposite sex pedophiles as common heterosexuals knew this had nothing to do with them. So 'Straight', 'Gay' and 'Others' gives us a stage two understanding of sexual variation.

By the mid-to-late nineteen eighties, things had evolved even further in the common mindset and there were now four boxes. 'Straight', 'Gay' (including same sex pedophiles), 'Transwhatever' and 'The Rest'. Clearly a stage three understanding.

By the cusp of the nineteen nineties the 'Transwhatever' tag was becoming subdivided as the rest of the 'Transwhatever' community would dub themselves 'Transgendered' to distinguish themselves from the 'Transsexuals'. But by the mid-nineteen nineties, the Transsexuals liked that term better as it got the 'sex' out of it and they felt that their condition was more about a gender recognition rather than a surgery goal. Sex changes were now 'just an option' for 'Transgendered' people.

By the turn of the century, the American public was finally starting to understand that there was a new category and that category meant re-evaluating the previous categories. It was becoming clear that there was a significant difference between same sex pedophiles and same sex adult interests. Finally, the categories provided a respectable separation for homosexuals and even a label subdivision: 'Straight', 'Gay/Lesbian', 'Transgendered', 'Pedophiles', and 'The Rest'. If this placed society at a stage four understanding for the first decade of the twenty-first century, where does that place your level of understanding?

In the Fall of Nineteen Eighty-Two I was still just as clueless about my 'situation' as I had ever been. Watching all these talk shows provided me insight into everything else, but not myself. I didn't have any sexual interests, so the whole heterosexual/homosexual/pedophile categories seemed to have nothing to do with me. When it came to 'Transsexualism' I didn't find I fit there either as it seemed to be about functional members of one sex wanting to be members of the opposite sex to some degree. I didn't find myself to be a function member of any sex. I wasn't a 'Transvestite', if anything I was the opposite of that as I felt most comfortable in whatever clothing was most common between men and women. As young men and women commonly wore jeans and tees in America, that was the clothing I felt most comfortable in as it wasn't sex specific. As clothing gets more formal it becomes more sex specific and I find myself increasingly uncomfortable in it.

The label of my father's 'What You Are' statement had haunted me since the previous year, not because he didn't know what to label me as, to my face, but simply because I didn't.

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Night And Day

71

My father would normally have my return flight from Colorado to New England arrive on the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, but this time, perhaps for a better price, it came back on the Wednesday after. While there would have been little chance to see my friends before they left for College, this assured it and I arrived in my home town which looked very much the same. But this time I wouldn't have the comfort of longtime friends to get me through this year, just familiar surroundings.

Nothing went wrong with the trip back and nothing had happened to my bedroom while I was gone. It was like the return home I should have had the previous year. My first full day back, I went to the grocery store to request my schedule only to find the assistant manager flustered as he hadn't planned on me being back and would 'have to look into it'. I touched base with Joe, the grocery store owner, and he said he'd work something out and to come in on Saturday as my first day. I don't know if it was the assistant manager or not, but for some strange reason the owner of the local book store tracked me down the Friday between and offered me a part-time job. He said he heard I was looking for a job, but I assured him I already had one. Further, having to dress up every day and stand behind a counter for less money, versus wearing what I normally wore while working a variety of tasks full-time left little chance that I'd consider the book store job.

By the weekend, the lack of my friends was starting to sink in, no after trip visit with Jonathan to discuss the new games I'd come across, no bumping into familiar faces at the grocery store... Well, actually there were a handful of new baggers from the previous year that were the seasoned baggers of this year and then, to my surprise, there was Peter. His upperclassman friend had waited at home a year after his graduation from High School until Pete graduated so they could join the Army together. Apparently things hadn't worked out for Pete at boot camp and he was back at the store's Meat Room while his friend was now trapped alone in the Army for the coming years. As with the lack of news of his mother, Pete kept what had happened with the military close to his vest. While an old familiar face, the slow drift apart in our friendship had left us as acquaintances at best, but no longer friends.

My Saturday was much like the previous two years of Bagging Saturdays while Joe worked out my full schedule then handed it to me by that afternoon. With the store always closed on Sundays, my second day off had changed from Thursdays, which synced-up with the high school's late bus schedule, to Tuesdays. My week would thus be six o'clock at night till two thirty in the morning Monday, Wednesday and Thursday working the whole time with the night crew. Friday was a hybrid of four till eleven, half with the baggers until store closed at eight, then the rest with the night crew, with Saturday a mixed duty day as well. For both Friday evening and Saturdays, I was like the chief bagger, where I would fill-in and organize lunch breaks for the regular baggers and help-out during crunch times. For the rest of the time on Saturdays I'd be in charge of keeping the dairy case and beer case stocked. My days periodically helping out with the Produce Department was now behind me for good.

For the night crew days, I got to meet a whole new group of employees I hadn't known before. Tasked with unloading trucks of new stock twice a week to keep the shelves filled, then using up leftover stock for the nights in between, it was like a little family headed by Geno and I would work with his second, Nick, in the canned and jarred food aisle. Effectively each aisle had its own employee to stock it during the night and Nick's sister to work in the Deli making the sandwiches and grinders for the next day. There was a young woman who worked the Health & Beauty section, too, but she often kept to herself and Joe spent some time in the evenings helping her finish up, so they could leave sooner in the evening and do something else. Apparently Joe hadn't been waiting around for my mother to return from Colorado...

I think I had actually first met Geno when I was age ten and left the family home on my first night staying with my father after my mother had moved to the apartment. My dad and Pappy spent the evening saying derogatory things about mom. I had run from the house and gone to the store to find my mother, then working on the night crew, and Geno was the one who eventually responded to my knocking on the store's windows. That having happened seven years earlier, I don't know if he remembered me from that one time or not.

He was like the patriarch of the night crew family with Nick the brother, Amelia the sister and the rest of the guys like various odd uncles. With the loss of seeing my friends at school every day, I couldn't have wished for a better replacement group of people. We'd have dinner break on our own or in pairs on the usual nights, but have spaghetti nights for a shared dinner on Fridays. Once two in the morning came, we'd hustle to clear the main floor of boxes and carts, then half of us would pull out the large push brooms and sweep with the other half of us bringing out the floor scrubbing machines. I was assigned a floor scrubbing machine and had fun taming the throbbing mass as one carefully guided it up and down the aisles. By two thirty we'd be saying our good nights and I'd then walk across the hayfield in the dark, and sometimes moon lit nights, to the house. It was my first experience nighttime nature walking and I came to like it and would take it up as a hobby in my later years.

With Wednesdays as the lightest workload of the Night Crew, I'd sometimes do maintenance work at the store with Nick, repairing tile, reinforcing truck unloading 'dock' areas or patching walls. Once we had to go to the first branch store and do some repairs and to my surprise the store I had originally worked at had changed dramatically. The gas station next door had been bought and the store merged with its space, adding a whole new wing to the main floor. The gas pumps were retained and the Meat Room moved to the new wing along with a new deli section. The old back room which had held the original meat and produce work areas had been opened-up to contain a Health & Beauty alcove at the back, with the produce work area now confined to a closet next to the loading dock. This was the rare time I didn't help out as much as I should have with the work as I was enthralled by the changes that had occurred to the store over the past three years, I just had to explore and Nick let me. On the drive back to the main store he asked about my fascination and I told him about my previous years working for the store chain as a child.

The hardest part of my schedule was the shift from Friday night to first thing Saturdays. Theoretically, I had eight hours of time to sleep, but with the routine of going to bed by four in the morning on the other days, going to bed three hours earlier on one night didn't work for me and I'd often just get four hours of sleep, then rush to the store after I got up, sometimes arriving a little bit late. But unlike the previous year where I was a lethargic lump at the store, I was back to my focused self this year and proud of my work. For Saturdays, I'd promptly fill-up the dairy case after Friday evening's shoppers, then give the baggers their morning break, top-off the beer case, then give the baggers their lunch break. As the baggers and myself worked the full day from eight until six, our lunch breaks needed to be an hour long staggered in two shifts, eleven thirty, then twelve thirty. Everyone wanted eleven thirty and to convince half the baggers to wait until the second lunch shift, I bribed them with trips to my house to play games on my computer during the later lunch time.

Once, Pete joined us, then I didn't see him again during a lunch break until one time in May when the rest of the baggers wanted the second lunch slot for some reason so I came home earlier than I normally would to find Pete in the house playing games on the computer during his lunch break without my knowledge. As kids in Elementary School, I had shown him where the hidden key was for the back door. It looked like he had remembered over the past decade and had been coming to my house for some time during his Saturday lunch breaks to help himself to games. As I got home and noticed this, I decided to play it cool and just pull up a chair and watch as he played. Assuming this hadn't been his first time doing this, he must have been walking the driveway and road back to the grocery store so I wouldn't see him while I was cutting across the hayfield. When the lunch break ended, we walked back to the store together. As I had not noticed previous signs of his visits, he was being respectful when he was using the computer and I feared that if I complained about his doing this without asking he'd take it out by damaging my now three thousand dollar computer system when I wasn't home, as he had ruined my maternal grandfather's heirloom watch back when we were kids.

After only my first two months working full-time, Joe called on me for other needs. Monday mornings became a four hour stretch to top-off the dairy case and go with him to the liquor store to load up on wine for the grocery store's wine aisle. For this we'd take his car, collect a trailer at his home and then load the trailer together and unload it at the store. This was the most we had worked together ever and it was nice to visit with him once again on these little drives. Sometimes when the home delivery driver needed a day off, I'd be called to come in for a few hours to be the muscle while the head cashier played the navigator. And once I was tasked with delivering spare stock from the main store to the new, second branch store in the southern part of the state. The first store of the chain to be built from scratch, it was like the new car equivalent of a grocery store, all bright and shiny. I imagined that if I stayed in New England, Joe would one day give me my own branch store to manage. But my heart was with computers, so Colorado it would be.

By the end of my ten months working full-time, I was briefly assigned to Amelia in the Deli department at night to make the next day's sandwiches as the college kids arrived home from College and took their summertime jobs at the store. Oddly enough, the visit from the store owner's wife to belittle me was the closest thing I got to an official send-off from the grocery store. Happening on a Friday, if it was just the core group I'm sure we would have said our goodbyes during the spaghetti gathering, but with the expanded work staff, we had to drop those as they were no longer practical. Instead when midnight came I quickly went to each core member of the crew in their aisles and said my final goodbye as they worked, then let myself out the back door of the store and made my final walk across the hayfield...

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Head Of Steam

70

What would greet me with the start of these last twelve months before my permanent move to Colorado...?

Despite the horrible year, with overcoming the surprise developments around my graduation and my effectively torpedoing my father's disowning of me, I left for Colorado with a full head of steam like the previous year. Unlike the previous trip, though, I also came with my complete computer; during the course of the year I had stumbled upon official luggage for the computer and its primary pieces. I wasn't sure about their latches, but some strapping took care of that and this time it was the Expansion Interface that was my boxed carry-on. Given all the extra hardware from my expanded computer, the heavy sewing machine desk at my mother's had to be pulled even further from the wall and an old Ouija board placed on top to give it a large enough surface. Jeff helped me figure out what the problem was with the disk drive I had bought along with the Expansion Interface: Turned out it was the Expansion Interface's built-in timer chip was defective. Without it to keep the rhythm the computer didn't know how to read the disks. He kindly replaced it for me and I was in business!

Mother had found a boyfriend while I was away, or at least the first Colorado boyfriend that I knew of. He was about the same height as dad, which put him about half a foot shorter than mother. He was diabetic and had developed a hobby baking sweets for friends. He also worked at one of the big name computer firms. He expressed interest in my computer and offered to take me on a tour of 'The Building' one day. Mother also had a new job, she was now working as part of the kitchen staff at a local hospital, she didn't tell me what lead to her leaving the grocery store turned deli, but I did catch on that there had been a long gap between the jobs.

Over the years, mother had collected copies of her children's High School graduation pictures, she placed these in various configurations and living locations. By the time she was in the mobile home, she hung them on the wall directly outside my bedroom door, sister above, brothers side-by-side below. Clearly, once I had a picture it would go below thus changing the triangle to a diamond. That time had come as I brought copies of my official graduation photo in various sizes to her. She took one look at the picture and shrieked, ''You look like a girl!'' She then collapsed into her chair and began sobbing. Before you have any misimpressions, my photo was like my brothers' except I had shorter hair than my not as older brother. I was wearing my corduroy three piece suit and had a couple of acne marks on my face. No make-up, no dress, no jewelry, nothing to socially identify me as a girl. Despite having shorter hair than my brother and a three piece suit in the photo, my mother took me as she saw me, and that horrified her. ''You look like a girl,'' she bit off as a mumbled echo and I left her to finish her cry.

My photo wasn't added to the wall of children, instead she demanded I get my annual-visit hair cut, bought a dress shirt of her own choosing and a three pack of pocketless white tee shirts. Her demand was I dress-up and she would have my picture professionally taken in town to her suiting. The dress shirt she had gotten me was a bit translucent, which was a problem given my ACE bandage bound breasts. So I put on one of the white tees which, given its smaller size, was form fitting and again didn't help disguise my chest. All of my baggy, left pocketed, tee shirts which had been my mainstay for the previous five years were in colors, so I couldn't wear those underneath the dress shirt. As mother was pounding on my bedroom door as the time came to leave for the photo, I used the only thing I had available and pulled the additional two pocketless white tees over the first one and put on the dress shirt. It felt stupid and was quickly hot as hell as we arrived at the photographers. Photos of just my face was quickly discouraged as it didn't make me seem manly enough despite the hair cut, so I was then told to take various poses for full body and three-quarter body photos. Looking over the proofs later on, mother found one that she deemed to be macho enough for my graduation photo and had copies of it made in various sizes for herself, our siblings, and her friends.

Left leg raised up with my foot on an out of picture foot stool, bent over with my left elbow resting on my left knee, right forearm resting on my left forearm, the sheen of sweat covering my face as I looked off too the right, my irritation was not hidden from the over one hour ordeal. When my not as older brother was next on leave and saw the photo on the wall of graduation photos, he laughed. He said it looked like I had just come in for the picture after beating my slaves. I thought it was an apt description. Of course the ultimate result of the picture was that my three-quarter pose shot stood out from the rest of my siblings head-only shots, just drawing the casual visitor to immediately recognize that I didn't fit. While my mother patted herself on the back for finally getting a proper picture of me, it became what welcomed me each and every time I walked out of the bedroom, reminding me of my discomfort and ire from the day.

With that first and only incident of conflict between mother and me over, the rest of the Summer settled into what I would have expected...

Jeff's computer had made a transition while I was gone and had taken on a life running a dial up site. Largely serving as a message board for other dial up users, I quickly doled out a little cash to upgrade my computer to sport the necessary adapter for a dial-up interface. The bad new was the room with the computer didn't have a telephone and while I, at first, bridged this with a few long extension cords from the living room area, that ended up not being acceptable to mother. Realizing that the two built-in phone jacks ran down the same long wall from the living room in front to the master bedroom in back, I peeled away some of the external aluminum siding from the mobile home when my mother was at work one day and found the long phone cable between the two rooms. With some parts and cable from Radio Shack, I spliced into the connecting phone line and added a third jack in my bedroom which adjoined the room with the computer. This would allow me to have a phone in my bedroom now, then a plug-in splitter to provide a line to the computer room by way of the two sided outlet the rooms shared. Jeff donated his first computer modem for me to use, a wooden boxed acoustic coupler that you placed the handset of a traditional style phone into, the round ends of the handset making a tight seal to the round rubber rings of the dial up modem.

One of Jeff's latest kids to wow with his set-up became my second friend in Colorado, about two years younger than me, I actually made him air-sick when he was watching me play Microsoft's first Flight Simulator. Despite the blocky black & white graphics, it was still an effective program. And I was back to tuning my magnum opus game 'Star Quest'. Having taken the school year off from working on it given my unexplained bout of brain fog, I was back at it and came up with an exciting twist. Now as you found and blew-up alien bases hidden in our local star cluster, there was a chance an alien baseship would trace you back to Earth and you'd have to attack it and blow it up before you could enter our solar system and dock. It was more real time graphics where you had to center the ship into your crosshairs while its shots at you caused flashes and an escalating damage total; you had to struggle to aim at the small vulnerable point of the attacking ship as it did evasive maneuvers. If you hit it right, before their final shot killed you, their ship would blow up and you could dock at Earth and get your ship repaired. Not knowing when these base ships would show up added a level of anticipation to the game which it had previously lacked and it also taught the player to pace themselves as, if they blew-up multiple planet-side bases before returning to Earth, there was a chance of multiple baseships waiting for them when they arrived. 'Star Quest' was now nearly there as the epic game I had originally envisioned, but still lacked a climactic final moment. Further still, the game was stuffed into every corner of the available thirty-two kilobytes of memory, so any climactic moment I came up with would have to be very tiny, code-wise.

The daily routine broke down to my working with the computer at the mobile home during the daytime, either writing code, or participating online. Then when my mother got home from work, if she didn't have plans for the evening, I'd likely borrow her car and spend the time at Jeff's, often until the wee hours of the next morning. This worked for me, though in retrospect I wonder if mother might have resented it a bit as this meant I spent very little time with her during that Summer. I must admit, after the photo incident, I wasn't looking to spend more time with her. Still, she had her friends from the singles' club and her new boyfriend, so I no longer had to worry about her being lonely as she had been during her first years in Colorado.

The end of Summer came and it was time to pack-up the computer components and fly back to New England for my final year living there and my first year working full-time at the grocery store chain. My goal was to save up a nest egg and move to Colorado for good and find myself a computer job!

Instead I'd be cursed with the fate of being nothing more than a Hot Dog vendor, if the grocery store owner's wife had her wishes...

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Above Average

69

Imagine if you will a situation where you are going to graduate from High School by showing up at the school in the morning and turning in a paper. Then imagine that your father has ordered you not to leave the house or go to school that morning. What would you do?

Years later, when I'd tell people of this story, it'd be pointed out to me that my father had been trying to stop me from graduating since the very start of my Senior year of High School. How? I wondered. By starting out the year with him stating that I was disowned upon graduation. I had been set up for failure as my subconscious would realize that if graduation meant I was disowned, not graduating would save me from being disowned... Was that why I had done so poorly in my final year of High School? Perhaps it was a contributing factor, but the loss of my mentor and erstwhile protector Zack Hatch had a part to do with it, and my inability to figure out why I couldn't pass any 'Advanced Math' exam factored into it as well. Still, it was a good point: That my father had set me up to fail that year.

And as that had failed, he was now taking steps to assure I'd still fail by the end of the year, one way or another.

During the morning phone call when he ordered me to stay at home until he got there, he was formulating this plan where he was going to cancel my plane ticket to Colorado and I would be staying in town and taking Summer School in order to finish my classes and graduate. Despite my trying to tell him the issue was resolved, he wasn't going to listen to a word of it and I was to definitely stay home until he got there to give me a piece of his mind in person.

And so from that phone call at six forty-five that morning, I stayed at home and watched the clock pass seven fifteen. It was now too late to catch the bus. And I continued to wait until seven thirty. It was now too late for me to hop on my moped and take it to the school. And then seven forty came and went. And went with it, too, was any chance of catching a ride with a friend driving themselves to the school that morning. By seven forty-five, an hour after my father had called and told me he was on his way over to chew me out, it was clear he wasn't coming as he was only a twenty-five minute drive to the house when he called. At seven fifty, I decided to blow him off and realized I could take the spare key from the cabinet and take Lois's, his girl friend's, left behind truck to the High School. I did and got there with two minutes to spare.

I saw the English teacher and handed her my report, she thanked me, and I let the Principal know, and he thanked me, and I met my friends in the cafeteria. They were all going to go to Jonathan's house for an afternoon of fun and boating on the lake. I joined them and we picked up Pete's upperclassman friend along the way. At the far side of the lake, we tied-up the boat and bummed around the lake town and ate, then we boated back to Jonathan's house where I excused myself and went to work for my last day at the grocery store before I would have gone to Colorado later that week. Once done with work I took the truck home and parked it where it had always been and found that my father still wasn't home. He didn't get there with Lois until a few minutes later and apologized to me for making me wait all day for him to arrive. So I now knew that his order for me to stay home had been a rouse and I also knew that he had no clue that I hadn't stayed home.

So I told him it wasn't a problem as I hadn't stayed home.

A touch of his anger flared but with Lois there, he held it in check. But I wasn't going to graduate and he had told me to stay home! ''What are you talking about? They told me yesterday I was going to graduate,'' I said trying to suppress the smile at the corner of my lips. I was? ''Yes, I checked in at the school this morning and confirmed it,'' I noted, letting some of the smile out.

If his girl friend hadn't been there he would have had a yell fest at me and repeatedly called me a liar, but with her there, he couldn't and just said, ''Well that's nice to know.'' During dinner preparation he lamented that he hadn't had time to get ready for the graduation ceremony. At this I told him not to worry about it as I wasn't going. Now he had a new thing to bark about. I definitely was going to the graduation ceremony and he wasn't going to hear another word of it!

What was I going to wear, he asked during dinner. For what? For graduation. I guessed just my jeans and tee shirt. That wasn't acceptable the bark came back. I pointed out that I would be wearing a gown over it so no one would know. It still wasn't acceptable and we were going out first thing in the morning to buy me something appropriate!

whatever.

The next morning I pointed out that I could use my corduroy three piece suit from my eldest brother's wedding a few years earlier, it would only be the fourth time I had ever worn it. But no, it was too old and I needed something new for graduation and the three of us got into his car and we were off to the capital city. We went to the same formal wear place I had gone to two and a half years earlier for the corduroy suit and, as I didn't care, I let him and Lois pick out the suit, slacks, formal shirt and tie for me. They made me dressed up at the clothing store to make sure it all worked together. With the top button closed and the tie cinched up to my neck I felt myself break out in a cold sweat and wanted to tear them from my throat. Years later a psychologist would theorize the reason why I hated things tightly around my neck harkened back to the day of my birth. But I didn't have to worry about it now as my father and Lois were soon satisfied and I could quickly take off the suit. We drove back home as I had to be to graduation prep by the start of the afternoon.

Once back, we realized that we hadn't gotten any dress shoes so I'd have to wear my sneakers for the ceremony, but at least I'd be nicely dressed-up otherwise. I put on the slacks and shirt but kept it unbuttoned at the top and carried my tie & jacket over my arm as I left, I told my father I'd put them on at the school. Van picked me up and we were off. At the school it turned out that many of us who swore we weren't going to participate in the graduation ceremony were there as well, no doubt also upon demand of their parents. I left the tie & jacket in Van's car and everyone else went to get their gowns from the fittings of the previous Monday, I went to the office to find out about my gown. It turned out they had given it to a girl in our class who hadn't a gown of her own on Monday during the fittings, at the time they thought I wasn't going to need it, after all. So they pulled out a box of spare gowns and found one close enough in size for me to use, cap too, then I scrambled to the gymnasium where the rest of my classmates had already started 'procession practice'. I snuck into line where Luke showed me how to walk: Step, pause, step, pause. It reminded me of the 'King Tut' dance comedian Steve Martin had done on Saturday Night Live.

Once practice was done, there was a short break until the ceremony, this was when I should have gone out to Van's car to get the rest of my suit, but sure enough, with the gown on, all you could see was the line of the shirt collar and cuff of my slacks with the sneakers the most visible part. I didn't worry about it, just buttoning all but the very top button of the shirt and pinching in the collar underneath the gown to make it looked like it was buttoned.

The time had come and we lined-up in our places inside the gym and the band started playing. We processed from the gym's back door to our seats in front of the spectators already there and sat down. Various people spoke, but I wasn't paying attention as I just wanted to get this over with. Finally, it was time to be given our diplomas and we got up one row at a time to process to the stage. The Principal handed them out and the tassel of my cap moved from one side to the other, then I walked normally back to my seat and unbuttoned my upper shirt and pulled out the collar to let my neck breathe as I awaited the end of the ceremony. It came, some tossed their caps into the air, and then we could go to the parking lot to 'meet our loved ones'. In my case though, it was my father, his girl friend, and to my surprise my British Uncle Ronny had somehow found out about the graduation and come. He was the only one armed with a camera and all the pictures the family had of the event came from him. I don't even know if my eldest brother knew of the graduation day and time, nor if my not as older brother was still in town.

With Lois there as a witness, I decided to manipulate my father and asked him if I could stay at the house one more year to work full-time at the grocery store and save my money to officially move to Colorado. Knowing with her there hearing this request, he'd have to say 'Yes' so as not to reveal his true self to her. He said, ''Of course!''

He decided we should go out for dinner. Uncle Ronny couldn't join us and excused himself to drive home, and I 'went to change' and got the rest of my suit out of Van's car. I took off my gown and cap and carried them with the suit to where dad had parked and we drove to the house to get Pappy. After dinner, we got home and as they went to the living room to watch shows, I went up stairs to my bedroom. Using the headphones, I listened to music lying in bed throughout the night as I was so buzzed with the excitement of having graduated.

I couldn't sleep at all and watched the clock until it was time for my final trip to the school the following morning. It was the day after graduation and I remembered what I could do. I entered the school and went to the guidance counselor's office. He wanted to know what brought me back and I told him I wanted my file. He'd have to get it and a few minutes later returned, file in hand. It looked like a lot of paperwork had been removed, but the results of the I.Q. test were still there. I didn't know much about I.Q. tests, but as I left the school and peeked in at the results I knew that one hundred was an average score.

I was above average.

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Not Graduating

68

The last week and a half of Senior year was effectively just a full day study hall for us as they wanted to get the final grades in and confirmed ahead of time before the graduation ceremony occurred Wednesday of the following week. The first couple days of this was us trading our yearbooks back and forth for signings. This would have been a good time to play games on the computers at the school, but I'm glad I couldn't as it assured I didn't spend my last days hidden in a closet while the rest of Senior class had its final social fest. Twelve years. And if you include all the years I'd been going to any school with some of these kids, Fourteen!

I did have a panicked moment the previous week as it suddenly occurred to me that, given the number of classes I'd withdrawn from and failed this year that I might not have enough credits to graduate, but looking over all my past years and totaling up the credits, I found I'd be fine. I had become such a class-taking over-achiever toward the end of my Sophomore year and all through my Junior year that I had gotten most all of the credits I needed to graduate before my Senior year. In retrospect, had I known this, then I would have demanded taking the 'Civics' course during my Junior year as I had originally wanted, thus I probably could have been done with High School by the first quarter of this year. Too late to worry about it now. As long as I passed the final quarter of 'Civics' class, I was free and clear. With the gaps left from the withdrawn math and Spanish classes, I even had additional English quarter credits to spare!

As the end of the final full week came, year books were filled and we faced the challenge of where we were going to sit as we visited for the hours of the day: Library area for a couple of hours? Shoot some hoops in the gym? Let's sit in the cafeteria for the last few hours of the day! All this time in the background was the Death March. Names of Seniors were called over the intercom, about one per hour, as they were beckoned to the office. These were the students being informed that they were not going to graduate. Most of the time these names were no surprise as they would include students who would never show up to school anyhow and thus their name would be called again and again between the names of those who were here. One surprise was the son of the music teacher; after his name was called we didn't see him again. We soon heard that his father had rushed him to the nearest G.E.D. testing location so he would be done with High School one way or the other, though still wouldn't be able to participate in the graduation ceremony itself. Hell, a lot of us weren't planning on putting on the cap and gown and participating in that. No great loss.

We were sitting in the cafeteria for our final Friday, chatting, and my name was called. A hush fell over the table as everyone assumed what it meant. Even me, despite my having gone over my numbers earlier and finding them fit. Even me. I rose from my chair at the end of the table and walked to the office. With each step my mind raced: Had there been anything I'd missed? If not, then that meant I'd flunked the final quarter of 'Civics' class: A required class, if not passed one couldn't graduate. But I thought I'd been doing better in that class for this final quarter...

Arriving at the office I was ushered into the conference room where the guidance counselor sat. He told me to close the door behind me. I did, then immediately asked: ''Was it Civics class?''

He knew exactly what I was asking and said, ''No.'' Then I rattled through the rest of the classes I had been taking during the final quarter and to each it was, ''No.'' I had passed all my classes and yet had gotten called to the office? Was there some other reason I'd been called in to the office for? ''No.''

''Then what?'' I asked, dumbfounded. The guidance counselor gave me the explanation of why I wasn't graduating: I had failed Basic Composition, a required class for my Sophomore year. ''Yes, but I took it and passed it in my Junior year,'' I shot back. True, but when one fails that class, they need to take an additional English class along with it to make up for failing it the first time. ''But I have spare English credits,'' I pointed out. Yes, but they weren't the right type of English class credits. There was a specific class type that needed to be taken and as I hadn't taken it in the past two years, I wasn't going to be graduating now... My jaw dropped at this bizarre situation as I asked what type of English class was it? A literature class. Had they caught it soon enough then I could have taken 'Science Fiction Lit' this quarter and graduated. ''But I read Science Fiction all the time...'' I returned. That may be, but you didn't take the class. Sorry. Next.

I walked out of the office and meandered back toward my friends sitting in the cafeteria. I had no clue what to say. As I came to my empty end seat, I spontaneously kicked it and, as if I was dreaming and this wasn't reality, it made a beautiful arc while staying completely level from where our table was, down the empty aisle between tables to make a perfect four point landing at the end of the cafeteria around thirty feet away. It was an impossible kick, and yet I had done it. Everything was no longer making sense. My friends were looking at me with straight faces, more interested in what I'd been told rather than noticing the chair. How could I tell them that an oversight from my Sophomore year of High School was why I wasn't going to be graduating? ''I'll think of something,'' I told them but knew I had nothing.

''Get that back,'' the cafeteria monitor said about the chair. I went and carried it back to the table of my friends and sat down as they talked about other things.

For some reason my not as older brother was on leave and back in our home town for a few days. Staying with my eldest brother and his wife, I had already been invited to join them after work for a visit. An evening of bagging groceries immediately after school then I hopped on my moped and drove to my eldest brother's current place. This was the closest he had lived to the family home since he had been disowned eleven years earlier. A small house that had been added onto again and again over the century, it had an odd linear feel to the rooms. At the far end was the sitting area of futons or platforms with cushions tossed on top. We sat there and my not as older brother talked about his work in the military as my mind just zoned-out about the fact that I wasn't graduating. Eventually the talk turned to asking me how things were going, it would have been a great question at the beginning of the school year, but now all I had to say was, ''I'm not going to be graduating.''

This caused a quiet moment, then the echoed question, ''You aren't going to graduate?''

''No. They just told me this afternoon,'' and that seemed to be the end of that topic.

After nine o'clock, I took my leave and went home.

My paternal grandfather had returned from snowbirding by May and my father and his girlfriend had taken up returning home for dinner and to watch T.V. with him during the evenings. I just went straight to my bedroom and lay there until I fell asleep.

Saturday was my final full day at the grocery store until my summer break, then our final Dungeons & Dragon's session for the school year that evening. Sunday morning I got a surprise phone call from Van, he and Luke were going to see that new Spielberg movie and were wondering if I'd want to come along and I did. Van picked me up and we made small chit-chat during the drive, but ignored the big issue. We picked up Luke then continued the rest of the way to the capital city where we saw E.T. The Extraterrestrial. It was a nice enough movie, but for some reason my mind was on other things during it. Afterwards we found a sandwich shop and ate, then got on the road back to our homes. I'm sure we talked of various things during lunch and the drive back, but I can't for the life of me remember what.

When I got home, my father and his girl friend, Lois, had taken the night off so Pappy was back in his apartment for the evening and I had the house to myself. I went to my bedroom, lowered the computer keyboard and placed the writing board over it and began writing my heart out about the whole 'Not Graduating' situation. I noted the unfairness of it all with the bit that the guidance counselor had told me in my Sophomore year that he'd get back to me if there was any problem with my not passing Basic Composition the first time. I added my dismay that he apparently meant he'd get back to me four days before graduation. Five pages written in pencil over three hours, I read it and realized it was pretty good but could be tightened-up. For the first time in many years, I went from a rough draft and made a final copy in pen, cutting out about a page worth of whining and focusing on the facts.

Going to school the following morning, I left it unsigned in the Principal's inbox. Van caught me in the hallway as I walked out and told me he was going home after his gown fitting and wondered if I wanted to join him for a trip to his house and lunch. Sure, I waited in the cafeteria until he was done, then we left.

The visit to his house was a nice change of pace than just sitting at the school waiting out the final days as we had been the whole previous week. His mother was there and made us some sandwiches. We played a little in his front yard, I think it was with a Frisbee, and then we hopped back in the car to return to the school to pick up some stuff.

Barely before I even made it in the front door of the school, classmates were coming out to get me. They had been calling my name over the intercom for the past few hours I had been at Van's place and the staff had been going to each student asking them if they knew where I was. Well, I was now here, so I went to the office to find out what the fuss was about. The office staff was excited to see me and I was rushed into the Principal's office, the guidance counselor was there with the Principal.

He had read my note from his inbox and had been inspired to look into the facts, guess who it was that had left it, and see if what I said had been true. After he confirmed it, they had brain stormed to find what they could do and, since I was already familiar with Science Fiction, they decided that I could take the Final of the 'Science Fiction Lit' class. If I passed it, they'd grant me the quarter credit I needed and I'd be graduating with the rest of my classmates. I could do the Final at home that evening, but I needed to have it in by eight fifteen the next morning for it to be graded and my graduation confirmed. I agreed with this plan and they handed back my four page letter and was told to find the 'Science Fiction Lit' teacher to discover what the Final was.

It turned out it was with the English teacher who had been so impressed with me during my Junior year and stunned by my decline during my Senior year. I had actually taken two English classes with her in the preceding two quarters and had improved from my failed second quarter class with her. The further irony was during the fourth quarter I had 'Reading For Leisure' with her and had spent my time reading and doing reports on various Science Fiction books of my choosing. I found her in the teacher work area and mentioned I had been sent to her to find out what the Final was. Essentially, I had to write a book report on one of a selection of Science Fiction books. I looked over the list and found that I hadn't read any of them already. So I picked the Arthur C. Clark one: Bicentennial Man. The school didn't have a copy I could borrow, but I was sure my father had one in his Science Fiction book collection.

Van greeted me outside the office area and asked what was up? By now, the rest of my classmates had long since gone so it had been nice for him to hang around. I told him about the plan that they'd let me graduate if I turned in a book report. He was stunned, but thought it was great and offered me a ride to the grocery store for our afternoon's work. Still holding my four page letter in my hand, I tucked it into the fold of the car's bench seat during the drive, then after work I walked home across the hayfield and had dinner with dad, Lois, and Pappy. My father, as seemed always the case, was oblivious to what was going on in my life and never asked any questions. Once done, they retired to the living room to watch shows and I went up stairs to look through his Science Fiction book collection, now shelved these past three years in my prior bedroom without my consent, and found the book, a book club edition.

And this is where I write the paragraph about the long night I spent reading the book from cover to cover and the bleary-eyed pre-dawn hours working up the book report... Bull. I just read the back cover tease, the jacket flaps' description and used my memory of the many other Arthur C. Clarke books I'd read over the years and the themes he would often touch on. I then wrote a report based on those themes and the impact they had and tossed in the couple of facts I had gleaned about the book so the report had some apparent connection to it. In pen, single draft, I slept well as my father and Lois went to her house for the night.

The following morning I woke up and got ready to catch the bus to school and turn in the book report, then the house phone began ringing and ringing. I answered it. It was my father, he had just found out about my not graduating and I was to stay home until he got there to have a talk with me. I tried explaining to him that I was graduating and that I couldn't stay home as I had to get to the school. He called me a liar and ordered me to stay there until he arrived.

Period.

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Extracurricular Activities

67

After bottoming out at school, could I somehow end up with a moment of 'success'?

With using the school's computers out as an option for Luke and me to play computer games once a week, he had taken up driving me to my place after school once a week to play the games there and have an impromptu dinner. Given no time constraints, these late afternoons soon turned into evenings before Luke would head back home, twenty miles away, at eight o'clock.

On one of these evenings we picked up a roasted chicken from the grocery store across the hayfield and sliced it in half down the spine and had a fun 'Medieval' time eating it with our bare hands. We decided to go to the arcade that night rather than using my computer to play video games and I noticed a funny thing: I was losing the left side of my field of vision. Not that I was losing vision in my left eye, but that I was losing the left side of my vision in both eyes, half with my left eye, about a third with my right eye. This area was replaced with a greyish fog. Something like this had happened to me the previous month, but it had soon gone away and so other than discussing it with Luke as an oddity, I saw little point in worrying about it. When playing games at the arcade I just turned my head a little to the left so the game screen was centered in the portion of my remaining vision. By the time Luke headed home I was beginning to get my full vision back. An odd occurrence, since it went away on its own, and mother hadn't wanted me to see a doctor since my thirteenth birthday, I just ignored it.

I had gotten into the routine of coming to school late and leaving early as I'd left my first and last periods of the day empty. Technically this was skipping school as I was under eighteen years old, but no one seemed to notice. Then, on one of the days I was driving my father's car, one of the Principal's twin daughters called to me after I snuck out the front door. Stunned, I stood by the car wide-eyed. Was this going to be an intervention? Had her father roped her into sussing me out after the incident with the computer tape? As she walked up to me she asked if she could ride along with me.

I nervously agreed. As she was eighteen, she could come and go to the school whatever times she liked. Perhaps she just wanted a ride somewhere? But when I asked she was vague and just wanted to go a little ways. Still worried about her being sent to have a 'chat' with me, I missed while moving the manual stick shift to the next gear. I looked down to see where I had gone wrong and she suddenly grabbed the top of the wheel and pushed it to the left; it turned out that as I looked down to the stick shift, I had let the car drift to the right and she intervened before I went off the side of the road. Now looking like a complete fool who couldn't drive as well as needing a good talking to, she had me stop a little further down the road and thanked me for the ride. She got out mentioning that she needed to practice her running and left me completely clueless. My only guess was she wanted a reason to run back to the school before the buses came...?

As the last month of school came and they were getting ready to take pictures for the year book, a funny thing happened. Students would come up to Luke or me to ask us a favor. Toward these last few weeks of our Senior year, our classmates began to realize the importance of being involved in 'extracurricular activities'. Could they join us for the Computer Club picture? I hadn't even known there was going to be a club picture for the year book, but since we had officially registered the club that meant there would be a picture for it. As more and more students asked to join, we agreed and when the time came I brought in my own computer to place next to the office's Trash-80 Model III on the table in the conference room. The photographer didn't feel there was enough room for all of us to be in the room and get a good picture, so we brought the table out into the more open front office area, set the computers up and, as the club sponsor, the wood shop teacher was called to join us.

He had attended the first couple of club gatherings at the start of the school year but soon lost interest, so he seemed truly surprised when he showed up and there was just shy of ten students gathered for the photo. As the founders, I sat down by my computer at one end of the table and Luke took the end with the Model III, the rest lined up behind the table with the wood shop teacher in the middle and the picture was taken. Looking through the resulting year book at our photo and the impressive Computer Club group we seemed to have that year, it left me wondering just how many of the other extracurricular activity photos had 'additional people' in them as well?

These books were handed out with still a full week left to go and we made notes in each others' pages. It turned out there was a surprise for me in the year book. Not only did it have a good picture of me giving my variety show speech at the end of Junior year, but in the 'Notables' section I was listed as 'The Sneakiest'. This stunned me, first that anyone would think I was notable, but then not knowing exactly what I had been the sneakiest at? Was it from making my own computer room key? Was it for my stunt bringing in the bottle of nonalcoholic grape juice to celebrate the new Principal? What was it? I asked my friends as they seemed to all know with the smirks on their faces, but they wouldn't tell me.

This would remain a mystery for me over the next two years.

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Computer Crumble

66

By early March, Luke and I were staying after school again to play games as part of the Computer Club. Originally intended to be a group that would share computer programming knowledge and occasionally play games, all others had drifted away and Luke and I just played until the late bus arrived. But this day we'd only been there a half hour when the library assistant stopped by and said she had to use the computer for a bit. Leaving my winter coat and school books behind in the computer room, Luke and I roamed the school building and chatted as we killed some time. After half an hour, we checked back and she was still using it and needed more time, so we drifted to the library area and settled down at one of the tables as we waited.

When the computer room had first been made over our Sophomore year Christmas break, it meant the computer was safely locked away when not in use and in order to access it we'd have to ask for the key from the math department head, Zack Hatch. Rather than carry it around with him, he left it hidden at his teachers' work area desk and told us where it was and we could just take it when we were going to use the computer. Toward the end of my Sophomore year, Zack was going to be away for a couple of days and when I returned to his desk to drop off the key, it occurred to me that I could just... Keep it over night and return it in the morning and he would never know. From that point forward, I had my own copy of the key when it was time to use the computer. And so I had been using it these past two years.

When Luke and I checked back another half hour later, she was just letting herself out of the room and told us we couldn't go back in as she had left something behind for the science teacher to use later that night. When we protested, she was firm. I could have asked to at least get my coat and books before she closed the door behind her but I came up with a 'clever' idea. Once she had gone, we would let ourselves back into the room to play games and if anyone asked, we'd say we had only let ourselves back in to 'retrieve my coat and books'...

This just shows how brain dead I was at the time as I let it happen and she closed the locked door of the computer room behind her. While Luke was bummed as she walked away, I told him of my clever plan and he liked it, we killed another five minutes until we saw her gather her stuff and leave the school and we went back to the room where I reached into my pocket to get my keys... Only to realize they were in my coat... Locked in the computer room.

No problem, we just made our way to the teacher's work area and Zack's desk to get the official key from his hiding place. It was gone. Was the key now being hidden somewhere else while Zack was on sabbatical? It hadn't been a question I had needed to ask during the year given my own key. In retrospect it could simply have been a case that the science teacher had already picked it up for his own visit later that night. Regardless, I was realizing just how stupid my 'clever' plan was.

Then it dawned on us that the custodian would have a key to the room, after all he had to clean the room and empty the waste basket. So we hunted him down as he was cleaning the cafeteria area and asked if he could let us in. He said he didn't have a key to the room either. This surprised us as how did the room get cleaned and the waste basket emptied out? So I told him that it was for a good purpose as my coat and books were locked in there, but he assured us he really didn't have any way into the room.

Now I was facing the prospect of having to take the late bus home, which would drop me off in the center of town, then walk a mile and a quarter to my home without my coat. While my house key was in my coat as well, we'd long had a hidden key at the back door of my home which I could use to get in. But I kept that little news from Luke as I hatched my new idea. The school used drop down ceiling tiles and those same tiles went over the computer room as it had been built after the ceiling tile had been put in place. So my idea was that we could go to the back of the room where there were storage shelves, use them as steps to the ceiling and push the tile aside and slip over the edge of the wall.

While agreeing it could work, Luke wasn't as sure about this idea, but I pointed out that if there was any fuss we'd have the fact that we were 'just retrieving my coat and books' as an excuse. To even better prepare this excuse, we told the custodian we were going to do it. While he couldn't give us permission, if we were telling him our alibi in advance, then we could use him as a witness that all we were going to do was get my coat and books... So when we got to the shelves behind the room, Luke went first and the idea was solid, but he realized he could just open the door from the inside once down and I wouldn't have to follow him through the ceiling void. He did and we were back and playing games in minutes.

We noticed next to the computer cassette player a spare tape and concluded that must have been what the librarian assistant had left behind for the science teacher. When it was time for the late bus, I decided to take it in revenge. Luke wasn't so sure about this new idea but I assured him it was just a prank to get back at the assistant for not letting us use the computer after she was done with it.

On the way home in the bus, I was feeling jazzed. Not only had I defied a teacher and gotten back into the computer room when she said I couldn't, but now I had that item she had felt was so important. And I debated what to do with it. Sure I could just return it in the morning, having had my counting coup and be scolded for my prank, but being thrilled by how much I'd gotten away with so far, I wanted to continued with this feeling of empowerment and do more. On the walk home I debated if I should read the tape and see what was on it, but if it wasn't a program then reading it would be a major hassle as to read and load data easily you had to know what the pattern of it was ahead of time. If it was a program, I honestly didn't care about it. As I got home I concluded I really didn't care what was on the tape, whatever it was.

So I decided to destroy it. Yes, that would continue to make me feel big and powerful! I pulled the tape out of the cassette, stringing it into the air and tried to pull it into pieces. It was surprisingly strong. So I just unspooled it all into the dining room's waste basket and decided I'd light it on fire as I'd seen on a television show way back when. But then I thought better of that as, what if the fire flared-up and reached the ceiling? Or left the waste basket scorched and ruined? But I couldn't just leave it in the waste basket either, as it could be rewound and would probably work just fine... I NEEDED TO DESTROY IT!

So I got my father's deodorant spray from the downstairs bathroom and sprayed it on the tape and felt truly supreme as I was finally getting back at the school system for all the years of it apparently having screwed me.

At the time, I felt this was the best moment of that year for me. Looking back at it now, I realize it was the most pathetic moment of my life.

On the bus to school the next morning I reveled in the fact that I was going to get in trouble. There was a plausible excuse for everything up until the point I took the tape from the computer room. Unless the science teacher had changed his mind and not gone to the school that night, then the staff would know the tape had been stolen and they'd want to have a talk with me. Sure enough when I got to the school, I barely had time to say 'Hi' to Luke as I put my stuff away and our names were called to the office.

Once there, we were sat down in the Principal's office and he looked more troubled than angry. The Vice Principal was there, arms folded, and the science teacher was the only one visibly brewing. We were asked about what had happened that night and we kept to our story about having to get into the computer room to get my coat and books.

''And the tape?'' the Principal asked.

''I destroyed it,'' I returned feeling a slight smile on my face.

The Principal and the Vice paled with shock at my statement, the science teacher turned red with checked rage... Then I saw Luke's face as he realized he had hitched his wagon to my charge over the cliff.

The Principal began to harden as he asked Luke, ''And you took part in this?''

While I wanted to crash and burn, I realized I didn't want to take Luke with me. I interjected: ''He was against me taking the tape and he didn't know what I was going to do with it.''

''Is this true?'' the Principal asked him. Luke agreed.

We were dismissed from his office while they decided what they were going to do. Then we were called back in. Luke was asked for an apology for his part and he gave it. I was asked for one and gave none. Again, my lack of remorse seemed to confuse the Principal, but he told us that our punishment would be that we were no longer allowed the use the school's computers.

That punishment felt a little light to me and, since I had my own key, I continued to use the computer at school. I tried to rope Luke into that, but he wisely refused to join me.

A couple weeks later they changed the lock.

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