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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Happy Birthday!

57

It was typical that the plane back to New England would be on the Thursday before Labor Day as my father would often have that as his day off and he could pick me up at Logan airport, normally in the evening, and get us home by night. This time, though, the flight back didn't leave until after dinner Colorado time. My not as older brother had some leave from the Air Force and arrived at the mobile home for my last day or so, then after we ate it was off to the local airport. Nothing particularly interesting about the flight other than most of it was in the darkness of night time. Given the two hour time change, we didn't arrive at the gate until one fourteen in the morning. Taking my computer with me off the plane as my carry-on, I expected to see dad in the gate waiting area, which was a normal practice for people before the turn of the century.

But my father wasn't there. I assumed that he had been running a little late, perhaps having trouble finding the gate so late in the night. So I stood aside and waited a half hour as the rest of the passengers greeted their own relatives that were here for them, or just drifted past, until they began to trickle to a few stragglers. I debated the pros and cons of remaining behind at the empty gate lobby, and decided it would be easier to follow the last handful of people to where the baggage claim was, rather than wait another half hour then figure it out for my own, alone. I concluded that, given the lateness, perhaps dad's plan all along was to meet me at the baggage claim and assumed it would be obvious to me. He had always been good at assuming people somehow guessing what was obvious to him.

Drifting as the last people through the airport would normally have perked my interest, but I was just tired and wanted to get home to bed. Once at the baggage claim the serpentine belt was already running, weaving in and out of the floor space providing plenty of opportunity to stand at the side and grab one's luggage. With much of the suitcases already picked out, mine were easy to find and move to one side. My father wasn't here either. Eventually the belt stopped and the last of the passengers gone except for me. Being before the age of mobile phones, I saw a payphone nearby and went to it to call home as I started to wonder if dad had just simply forgotten about me. I made sure to pick a phone where I could keep an eye on my collection of bags still by the belt. Using the last of my change, I called and the phone rang and rang and there was no answer, so clearly he and Roberta must have been on their way otherwise one of them would have been home this time of night to answer the phone. Still, I felt I should touch base with someone just so it was known where I was. The call not having completed, my change was returned to me and I called my mother in Colorado, which at this time would have been past midnight her time. Her initial anger at me calling late was quickly replaced with stunned silence as she realized I was alone at the airport.

Her first decision was to have me give her the payphone number and then she would call me back once she got dad on the phone at home. A few minutes stretched into fifteen and I decided to pull out the book of science fiction short stories I had brought with me on the plane to read. I tried to start the next one, but my eyes really didn't want to focus, just close. The payphone rang after twenty minutes had gone since I'd called her: Mother was on the line. She had called the house several times and gotten no answer so she concluded dad must truly be on his way and just been held up by something. With the emptiness of the airport closing in, I asked if she could stay on the phone for a bit and keep talking, she instead handed the phone to my not as older brother and we chatted for a bit, but soon my mother was back on the line explaining that she couldn't afford the long distance charges and was sure my father would be there soon.

Deciding what I should do, I looked to my pile of bags by the luggage belt and even though there was no one else around, I felt they were exposed and ready to be stolen if I closed my eyes to let them rest. I found a strip of chairs in an alcove near the claim area and brought my bags to the end chair, allowing me to huddle next to them and try to finish reading the story I had started. Once done it was past four in the morning and I couldn't imagine being awake another minute or more, but at the same time I couldn't really imaging sleeping in this stiff plastic chair either. I looked at the floor with its dingy carpet with bits of gum and dirt scuffed into it and hated the thought of lying on it. Also, in this alcove, what if I fell asleep and dad arrived at the claim area and not see me? Then I realized that in the protrusions of the serpentine luggage belt was a carpeted strip. I walked up to it for a look and it was clean. Stepping up over the belt I sat on it for a minute and made sure I could see my bags clearly from this position and anyone arriving could clearly see me. Then I pulled my legs up and lay down, just wanting to rest my eyes while intermittently glancing at my bags; I fell fast asleep on my back.

I was woken up by a guard around five thirty in the morning and told I couldn't be there as the day's planes would soon start arriving. I got myself up and off the belt island, the echoing sounds of vacuums permeated the space as the cleaning crew had arrived. My bags were still where I had left them and, seeing the time, I went back to the payphone and called the house again. It rang and rang, but the collect operator wouldn't let it ring more than just a couple extra times. So I settled down in the chair next to my bags and entered a semi-conscious stupor. The airport came to life as the morning sun drew in from the glass wall. Desks which had been empty all this time since I'd gotten here finally had people, then the first new crop of passengers arrived and the serpentine belt again flowed. It stopped again once empty, then flowed again with the next crop of passengers. The various arriving people were all busy looking for their bags and took no notice of me off to the side.

It finally dawned on me that it was passed eight o'clock. I tried the house again, and again there was no answer. I debated about whether to call my mother given how early it was her time, but finally chose to do so. I was still at the airport?!? She yelled back when I told her. Father had gone from an ass who was late to pick me up to a full hole for having forgotten to pick me up entirely. She went back to the plan of calling the family home a few more times, then she got desperate and called Uncle Ronny and Aunt Harriet. I hadn't seen either of them in years since my mother had first moved to Colorado. I hadn't any way of visiting them once living with my father as I didn't have a driver's license yet, and once I'd received my license, in my typically out of sight out of mind fashion, I hadn't thought of visiting them in the year since. Though from my father's side of the family, they never seemed to take an interest in visiting him. They agreed to pick me up at the airport once they cleaned-up and had breakfast, both being senior citizens at this point, I couldn't begrudge them that.

Then it occurred to mother to call the ski area and see if my dad was there. He was and he was pissed that mother had called Uncle Ronny and Aunt Harriet as he was going to pick me up in his own time. He called them to tell them not to come, but it was too late and they had already left for the two hour drive to Logan. Just shy of eleven thirty it finally dawned on me that my name was being called again and again on the airport intercom, I then had to figure out where the nearest phone of the right color was located. As my flight had long since emptied its bags, once they had reached the airport Uncle Ronny couldn't find out what luggage claim area I was in as the airport had several and he was on the phone to ask me. I didn't know either at this point and asked an attendant behind a counter next to me. I told them and they would see me soon. Mother had told me to call her once they had arrived so she would finally know I was leaving the airport. My not as older brother answered the phone, perhaps mother had gone to work by now, was she working this day? My mind simply wasn't functioning anymore but it occurred to me I should tell my brother that our Aunt and Uncle were here to take me home.

They came down the long concourse to the claim area and looked worried. Rather than having us lug my stuff to where the car was parked, Aunt Harriet thought it would be best if Uncle Ronny got the car and met us curbside just outside the glass wall of the claim area. He agreed and left. Not knowing what else to say in the meantime, she asked me how the flight had been. I flat out told her that at this point I couldn't even remember the flight as I'd been up so long with only a cat nap a few hours back. She assured me that I could sleep in the back of the car during the drive to my family home. I brought my stuff over to the glass wall and we looked out waiting to see their car. Aunt Harriet was beginning to wonder why it was taking so long when then Uncle Ronny arrived in the car outside. I brought my stuff out and he helped me load it into the trunk, then I clambered into the back and lay straight down as he explained he had to drive around the airport a couple of times before he found the right lane to take to this claim area.

I lay in back, though couldn't sleep, but at the same time I didn't want to sit up and have them try to engage me in conversation as I was too tired for that as well. I just lay back facing upwards, the cloth surface making-up the ceiling of the car bobbed back and forth as we rode. Then it donned on me it was my head bobbing back and forth with the bumps in the road. Hours later, they prompted me that we were almost there and I got myself to a sitting position and looked out the window to watch the familiar main road of my home town flow by. I focused my mind and finally got out the words to thank them for picking me up. They told me it was no problem at all and, while Aunt Harriet still looked worried for me, Uncle Ronny tried to lighten the mood with his usual bright smile. Up the woods cloaked driveway, we pulled into the loop portion and stopped. Dad had left work to meet us, despite his telling them to leave my luggage on the ground and go, Uncle Ronny insisted on helping us bring it in. Dad thanked him, but couldn't talk to them now as, 'He had to have a talk with me,' and they needed to leave. As my father followed them out the back door, I slunk to the kitchen table and waited for him to return. He did, and despite the warm weather, he closed the back door and sat on the other side of the table.

He then let me know that Roberta had divorced him over the Summer because of 'what I was' and it was all my fault. He had decided not to pick me up at the airport to 'teach me a lesson', though I would later learn that he told everyone else that he thought one o'clock Friday morning came after Friday night. He informed me that I was disowned and that he wanted me out of the house and never to see me again, but as he was magnanimous, he would let me stay at the family home to finish-up my last year of High School as long as I paid the bills. Upon graduation, the disowning would take effect.

He was staying with his new girl friend at her house. She owned a restaurant and once she knew I was coming back, she insisted on having a belated birthday party for me at her restaurant. As it was three in the afternoon, I asked if I had time to take a nap on my bed. ''No.'' I was told as we had to leave now. Dad went to Pappy's apartment to let him know it was time to go, but as Pappy had thought we would be leaving at dinner time, he needed to get ready first. I remained sitting at the kitchen table for the next half hour then it occurred to me to use the bathroom and splash some water on my face at least. I got into the back seat of the car with dad and Pappy taking the front seats.

The next couple of towns away, when we arrived at the place, it looked familiar as I had glimpsed it outside the passenger window so often over the years as a child. We came in and went to a table in the back half of the restaurant. 'Lois' came out to meet us and we sat down at a table and her daughter joined us. We made our orders and I realized this would be the first thing I'd have to eat since the airplane. It took me a few moments before I recognized Lois as the ticket girl my father had introduced me to nine years earlier who had run her fingers through my hair and told me how it was just like my dad's. Now she apparently ran a restaurant. She tried to engage me in some conversation, such as how had the flight been and such, but I was still far too tired to give more than a word or two response.

After dinner, she and dad went to the back kitchen area leaving just Pappy, me and Lois's daughter. She leaned forward and with a smirk on her face told me that dad had spent the whole Summer going around telling everyone that I was Gay. I don't know if Pappy hadn't heard what she said, or he was pretending not to have heard it. I had no idea how to respond and just sat silently. Given my 'situation' I knew I was different, but I had always thought that being 'Gay' meant having same-sex interests. I didn't have any of those, nor any interest in any sex. I didn't have much time to reflect on this though as dad and Lois emerged singing from the kitchen with smiles on their faces and a lit birthday cake.

''Happy Birthday To You, Happy Birthday To You...''

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The Situation

33

In my second to last year working at the main grocery store before moving to Colorado, I went for my break. The break room was the old upstairs apartment at the store where Joe and Dorcus had once lived, to get there one had to walk into the back room, past the long dairy cooler room, then turn left to walk past the sides of the dairy cooler and freezer room to reach the stairs. Once I went through the swinging doors on the start of this route, 'Betsy', a cashier, and her boyfriend were also taking a break and had settled atop a pallet of grocery boxes by the far corner of the dairy cooler. She normally wore thick lensed glasses but at this moment wasn't, for some reason. She shouted toward me, ''What sex are you?''

This question stunned me and I didn't know how to respond. So I chose to ignore it and kept on walking toward them on my way to the break room. ''What sex are you?'' she again shouted as I approached. And I ignored it. When I reached the corner where they were, I turned left toward the stairs and Betsy was dismayed because I hadn't said anything. Her boy friend told her who I was and she explained that, without her glasses she had been trying to guess who I was and she started-out with the most basic question of asking what sex I was. But I pretended not to hear her explanation, too, as I had pretended not to hear her question.

I went up the steps to the break room and found it empty. And I broke into a cold sweat and shook. You see, it wasn't that I thought she was trying to insult me with her question, but simply that I didn't know the answer...

By the last two weeks of seventh grade, my nipples started to hurt and chafe against my tee shirt. Lying on my stomach made them hurt more, so I stopped doing that. As I lived in a family that didn't talk about things unless we really had to, I just kept this to myself. A few weeks after school had let out, Uncle Ronny and Aunt Harriet came for a visit and as part of the visit was the obligatory picture that my mother took of me posing with them. When the picture was developed I saw myself in it and was shocked to see two round mounds pushing out from my tee shirt at chest level. Checking in the privacy of the bathroom mirror I discovered that my breasts were developing.

This came as a complete surprise to me as I thought I was a boy. I mean, I'd been peeing standing up for all those years! But even that was becoming more of a problem as the tissue around what I'll be calling the 'nub' was expanding and covering it up. But to me, that was the least of my problems as the breasts were the most obvious. Picking through my apartment closet, I discovered that my larger tee shirts were best as they were baggy and I could lean forward to keep them from clinging onto my chest. This also helped with the chafing problem.

Still, when time came for more pictures I felt the need to play it safe and lean forward and rest my hands on my knees if I was seated. When not seated, I would make a face, thus people's eyes would be drawn to my face in the picture, not my chest.

With the top half of the situation addressed, I found that all that extra tissue developing by the nub was very pinchy and uncomfortable. This was improved when I was walking with mother through a department store on one of our Saturday errand runs and saw that the guys' underwear section not only had briefs on display, but baggy looking boxers as well. As the baggy tee shirts seemed to help, I asked mother to buy me a set of the boxers. They helped too and so briefs were a thing of the past.

Summer time would have been the perfect time to have made new local friends in the area, but given my uncertainty about what was happening to me, I pretty much just kept to the tree house or apartment when not at my father's or working at the store.

August came and we reached my Thirteenth birthday. As I had turned down the offer to have another day of friends gather at the apartment, my mother arranged to have a gathering at my eldest brother's new apartment which he shared with his girl friend and my not as older brother. My not as older brother had moved into the family home when he returned from his Wyoming trip and taken a job at the main grocery store to save up money and go to College. He started out at a dorm room that Fall, which reminded me of the back room my maternal grandfather Bumpa had been in when he first went to a nursing home, but then moved into an off-campus apartment for the remainder of that year. College hadn't worked out and he returned to live at my eldest brother's apartment rather than move back in with our father at the family home. He had joined eldest brother's painting business and they all had used the apartment to experiment with color schemes and styles. With the fresh paint their apartment, the upper floor of an old house, was really homey unlike mom's apartment with its white painted walls, or the old family home with its now faded and peeling wall paper.

After dinner we sat at the couch with me in the center as I was given and unwrapped my presents. The present from my not as older brother was the ''Wings Over America'' three album set by Paul McCartney. Given my confusion by this, my brother explained that Paul McCartney was in the Beatles to which I became excited and said, ''Oh, a new Beatles album!'' No, it was explained further, that since the Beatles had broken up, Paul was now in a new band, 'Wings', and this was an album of their live concert. ''oh,'' I said and put it aside with suspicion. Though it turned out to be a great gift that introduced me to a new band that I came to love as the years rolled on.

To commemorate the event of my birthday, my mother took a picture of us sitting side by side on the couch and I was stuck. She was taking the picture from the side and if I leaned forward to make my tee shirt drape, it would block the view of a sibling, so I made a face just as she snapped the picture. A self developing 'instant' picture she only saw my face once it became clear and she was not happy. But she withheld her displeasure until we reached the apartment after we left my brothers'.

I went straight upstairs to put away my new gifts and she came up after me and demanded to know 'why I had taken up ruining her pictures' that Summer. At first hesitant, she insisted I tell her, and so I did. She seemed confused by my explanation so I lifted my shirt and showed her. She became quiet and pale. Then she told me to keep it a secret and not to tell anybody.

She avoided taking more pictures of me for the next few years and that suited me just fine.

Four years later I was in the break room at the main grocery store still stumped as to what I should say when people asked me what sex I was. Then it struck me to pull out my driver's license where it had an 'M'. So, legally, I was male. With the full force of my legal identification backing me up, when asked or filling out a form in the future, I would state 'Male.'

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Surroundings

26

After my entire life at one family home, how did I settle into my new surroundings?

To properly set the next four years, I should probably explain the townhouse and the surrounding area. The bottom floor was a concrete pad that had golden shag carpet over it, the stairs and upper floor were smooth hard wood floors. My mother was so fearful of slipping down those steps that she took the two foot wide strips of orange shag from the temporary living room at the house and sliced it up and glued it to each stair step using a vast quantity of white, all-purpose glue. While this insured no one would ever slip off a step, I doubt she got her security deposit back. The remaining strips of orange shag were used to carpet the attached storage shed where the clothes drier was located along with any yard items.

The upstairs was divided into two halves, the front half was the master bedroom which my mother let me have as I ''would have more room to play in,'' but with the bunk beds stacked in one corner with the chest of drawers directly next to it, it left the room very empty. The remaining half of the upstairs floor was cut in half again for the second bedroom which my mother took with the remaining portion sliced up for the bathroom, towel closet and hallway between it all. My mother bought a large round throw rug to put in the master bedroom to take up some of the vast floor space, but it looked rather lonely in the center of the floor, making the room seem that much larger.

Once I had finished the penicillin and regained my strength, I moved from the lower bunk to the excitement of the upper bunk. Before the age of safety rails, one night I rolled in bed only to fall off the edge. My head collided with the chest of drawers while the rest of my body hit the floor. I soon moved the chest of drawers against the wall at the foot of the bed and pulled up the throw rug to the base of the bed to cushion any future falls. By August, the thrill of sleeping on a high bunk had passed and I remembered the bunk bed came as two halves. I took them apart and I put the top half in the corner where the bunk bed had been and the lower half parallel to it halfway down the remaining wall. I slid the throw rug to the center of the smaller open floor space and this made the room look more naturally filled. I had chosen the top bunk half for the corner to use as my bed because its half had shorter legs and sleeping on such a low bed reminded me of the time my eldest brother slept on the mattress in my old childhood bedroom.

The townhouse complex was three buildings of four apartments each, set-up in an 'L' shape, with our apartment in the lower half of the long line. Inside the 'L' was a solid flat parking area with each apartment having enough room to park two cars in front. There were no lines. Between the buildings were large patches of lawn and behind them a smaller ribbon of lawn after which there was a forest. As I had enjoyed the tree houses my brothers had built at the house, my mother had Joe provide some assorted scrap wood so I could build my own tree house in the woods behind the apartments; she had gotten the permission of the landlord she told me. I then spent the next few days scouting the woods for an ideal spot.

The scraps of wood weren't much, so I talked my mother into going to a nearby town's hardware store so I could get a couple two by fours to support the base of the tree house, we also got some nails and a saw. My mother had kept my maternal grandfather's turn of the century hammer after clearing out his house, so she got herself a small toolbox to put it in and a set of screw drivers for use in the apartment. The tree house started out as a small platform between two tress with strips of the scrap wood nailed across to create the floor. With the remaining two by four wood, I created a ladder to get up to the platform, but found it was too short to reach from the ground to the platform. To accommodate this, I nailed one side to one of the trees about halfway between the ground and the tree house floor, the other side of the ladder hung in the open air. While not structurally sound, with my childhood weight it actually held up pretty good. From the platform I surveyed the woods and looked across a large rock touching the two trees I was at and it stretched to a third tree about six feet away. I fantasized about one day having the floor of the tree house reach that third tree, but I didn't have anywhere near enough scrap wood.

Then soon after, the remaining unused scrap wood I had in the backyard disappeared. My mother panicked as she saw the project of the tree house critical to keeping my interest in living at the apartment rather than deciding to move back with dad at the house. In reality I didn't realize I had a choice so she was safe. But still, she called around and found that the landlord's guy who came to mow the lawn assumed it was trash and took it and threw it out. As the landlord had given permission for the tree house to be built, he felt guilty about this and, as he was a house developer, had two four foot by eight foot sheets of half inch thick plywood brought over to replace the scrap wood. I was vastly better off with the deal and we ran to the hardware store to pick up five dollars more of two by fours and I was quickly across that rock and had a solid floor to the third tree and a roof to boot!

For birthdays, while my friends would have parties with lots of other friends, I pretty much just had one friend over, if that. But for my first birthday at the new apartment, my mother wanted to make it big and memorable and insisted that both my brothers attend and even had Uncle Ronny and Aunt Harriet come out. So everyone could come, we celebrated my birthday the Sunday before and we had lunch and cake, and I got to show-off my tree house and my mother took lots of pictures... In fact, that was one of my very few birthdays that pictures had been taken of and had ended-up in the photo album. For that birthday my father had one of my brothers bring a ten speed bicycle as my present. It was in a box and needed some assembly, which my brothers helped with, and it was child sized. While my mother had at first fumed that the bicycle was father's way of upstaging any present she had gotten me, those feelings were soon replaced with shy laughter. As I was just turning eleven, I was already no longer child sized, at least the size the bicycle had been intended for, thus my riding it was a little like the way clowns would ride tiny bicycles at the circus. By the next week I had found a longer handle bar brace pole and bicycle seat and installed them so I could ride with my legs fully extended. The side effect of this, though, was there was the bicycle down by my knees and feet, then about a foot of the extended poles to where my arms and seat were. Still, I was thrilled with it and the first time my father picked me up at the apartment the following month, my mother insisted I ride around the parking lot for him to see. I was more than happy to but, while I did, I noticed my mother smirking as my father frowned.

Once September came and I was going to go back to school, my mother returned to working the day shift at the local branch store and thus we discovered that the apartment complex had a block party every Friday night. The lights and loud music horrified my mother, but by the second Friday they drew me out of the apartment building to see what was going on and I got to meet my neighbors and one of them had a boy, 'Andrew', a few years younger than me whom I would later impress with the tree house and he would become my tag-along buddy whenever I was up to something on the nearby grounds as he wasn't allowed to leave the property without his parents. His parents didn't like the diminutive 'Andy,' but when we were out of their ear shot, I would call him Andy as he got a tickle out of being called by the forbidden name. With him in mind, I added middle height safety rails to the tree house and eventually filled the space between the safety rails and the floor base with slats of wood to make walls on either side. I eventually replaced the ladder that hung out into space with a structurally sound one at the back of the tree house.

Wandering the woods as Fall came, I found a girl, 'Beth', sitting on another large rock in the woods meditating. I introduced myself and while she was initially hesitant, we soon became good friends. She also lived at the apartment complex so it made it easy to visit. She was a year younger than me and had an even younger brother and a single mother about my sister's age. Having a mother so much younger than my own meant there was a whole different generations' worth of interests. Where my mother was into Herb Alpert and Dean Martin records, her mother was into rock and even Cheech & Chong albums. They had a bean bag chair which was all the modern rage at the time and her mother made Jello with a third of the water in a cookie sheet, then once solid, sliced it into squares which could be eaten as rubbery finger food.

With Fall came a shock. Once the ski area was closed for the Summer season this year, my father took Sundays off. It was the first, and I think the only time, he had either day of the weekends off on a regular basis. And he was taking them off just for me! Each Sunday he would pick me up early in the morning and take me places, typically touristy places but sometimes nature places. There was the Boston Museum of Science one time. Another Sunday he took me to visit an old timey railroad station and take a scenic steam train ride and he showed me how to squish a penny by placing it on the track for the train to run over. A trip to the capital city to bum around and see a re-release of Vincent Price's 3-D movie ''The House Of Wax'', this was one of the very first polarized light 3-D movies and I kept the special glasses in my keepsake drawer for the next few years. Once we visited the ski area where, at the base of one ski lift, there was a stream that a beaver had damned up making a pond; we got to watch with binoculars as the beaver worked, then later walked up to the damn and took a closer look. There was the time to visit the Boston Aquarium and the Bunker Hill multimedia experience nearby. There were a couple more of these and then they abruptly stopped and my father would just take me to the house and read the Sunday newspaper inside while I raked up the fallen leaves and pine needles for him. We never did anything like this again.

After another boring Sunday of just raking leaves or bumming around the house, as having friends over was not allowed, I asked my mother what I must have done wrong for him to have stopped taking me places? She laughed and told me they had finished the separation agreement two weeks earlier and ''He didn't have to put on a show anymore.''

Once the ski season started, my father was back to midweek days off and I would visit him and stay at the house on those days after school, and at the apartment the rest of the week. And so things remained for the next four years...

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The Disappearances

22

We, well most of us, as children get things as gifts, typically twice a year at birthdays and Christmas. As the years pass, these things accumulate in our rooms until they are bursting by the time we graduate High School. Or do they? For some, I'm sure the answer is yes, but for many others the answer is no.

One family faced the horror first hand with an annual purge dictated by their mother. When that day of the year came, the children had to run and grab everything they could, for that which they couldn't hold onto ended up in the yard sale, no matter how loud the protests or how genuine the crying. Some might at first pile all their toys and dolls into a corner of the room and sit on them to keep them safe, but it was to no avail as they were easily pulled from the pile and then those kids were literally left empty handed.

For my family, things just disappeared.

Uncle Ronny gave me a leather billfold that he'd gotten during one of his transatlantic trips. I was thrilled and quickly put all the money I had into it. After he and Aunt Harriet left, I went up to my room and played for a bit then left the billfold behind on the bedside table. I went for a long winding walk in the woods and got home with eager anticipation to look over and hold the billfold again. It wasn't there. While the loss of thirty-four cents wasn't heart breaking, the loss of the billfold was. What had happened to it? Had I actually had it in my pocket when I went for my walk? I quickly checked my pocket, then the other ones just to make sure. Nope, it wasn't there. Had it fallen out as I had walked?

I then redid my long winding walk, carefully watching the ground and checking behind trees. Nothing. I returned home and told my mother of the lost billfold. ''Where did you put it, last?'' she'd ask while not looking up from whatever it was she was doing. I'd tell her and she'd tell me to go check there. When I'd tell her I did and it wasn't there, she'd say, ''Then it must be somewhere else.''

When things disappear as a child, you can take it for granted, believe someone stole it or, as you get older, assume you're going crazy. When a broken toy disappears, you take it for granted as, let's face it, it was broken.

In fourth grade there was this girl whose desk was moved next to mine when the classroom got rearranged. She befriended me and as Christmas time approached I got a small toy of a plastic Santa face that, when you pulled the tassel of his hat, his red nose lit up. I took it to school and showed it to her, she thought it was fun. Later, when we went out to recess, I put it in my desk for safekeeping. When I returned it was gone. I told the teacher about it, this lead to a quick round of asking other students if they'd seen it. Nope, it was gone. At the end of the school day, when class was dismissed, we gathered our things to go home and I saw the girl take the Santa head out of her desk and begin to slip it into her bag. I grabbed her arm and called the teacher. Under the teacher's questioning, she admitted she took it from my desk while the rest of the class was at recess as she assumed I hadn't wanted it any more... Say what? This sort of thing happened again with her and I had to make sure not to bring any more personal items to school and leave them in my desk.

But when things disappeared from my bedroom at home, it was clear I must be going crazy. After all, my siblings were much older than me so why would they want a toy for a young kid? My parents were above reproach, again why would they steal from their own kid? They're parents after all. And as my childhood progressed, I began to take it for granted that things at home would just disappear.

As I got older, I noticed a pattern of those things that disappeared. Any gift from Uncle Ronny or Aunt Harriet disappeared within a few days. Smaller items were more likely to vanish than larger items. The rare gift from my father, which Mom hadn't gotten and put Dad's name on, disappeared within a month or two. Gifts from my siblings typically stayed around for a year, and gifts from my mother never disappeared.

Then one day I caught her red handed leaving my room with a handful of small things. When I startled her and asked what she was doing, she said she assumed I hadn't wanted these any more, even though some of them had been in my keepsake drawer. When I told her I did, she explained that she hadn't known that and handed them to me, telling me I should let her know these things.

This was when I realized I had to keep things safe from my mother. But how? It now made sense why the big things were rarest to go, as it would be obvious to the other family members if she took them and walked through the house holding them. So it became a question of where to keep those small things I most valued. The first solution was to not keep things in my keepsake drawer, but then that practice would be too obvious with it empty, so I pondered what small things I wouldn't mind losing and kept them there along with a couple of coins. Then I tried to squirrel away things at the back of my clothes drawers, but this only worked for a few weeks before they had apparently been found. Then I tried the simplest method of just spending more time in my room, thus giving my mother less opportunity to rifle through it. But ultimately that was futile as it would mean turning down all future play dates and never taking a shower or bath again.

Finally, it occurred to me to use the hidden spaces in the closets. The roof of my house had three foot wide strips that tapered down more quickly at the edges than did the rest of the roof over the bedrooms. The closets were in the first part of these tapers and started out with a flat ceiling square that then turned into an angled surface coming down. Once it reached halfway to the floor, there was a wall with a cabinet-like door which hid the interior tail-end of the taper. The little door was there for additional storage and to allow pipe and wiring access. Those spots were most often used for storing empty luggage or discarded shoes that had been outgrown. Here was a place to hide my most prized keepsakes and toys, and to be extra safe, I used the closet of my old childhood bedroom which was once again empty after my eldest brother left.

And it worked... for a few years.

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It Wasn't My Father

15

My first father figure was my British Uncle 'Ronny'. Yes, my father lived in the same house as I, but much as my sister acted as my mother during my early years, Uncle Ronny was my first father figure. My second father figure was Joe Giacomo, the owner of the grocery store across the hayfield. My third father figure was my best friend's, Pete's, own father 'Zack Hatch'. And my fourth father figure really wasn't, he was just this guy that managed the Radio Shack down the street...

My family home was the childhood family home of the Giacomo family. The Giacomos came from Italy in the eighteen hundreds and earned their money making dry stone walls around this area of rural New England. New England, an Ice Age glacial flow area, is littered with roundish rocks, some big and most small. As the glaciers flowed, rocks beneath them were tumbled over again and again, breaking off any sharp edges and making them rounder, though not with smooth surfaces like river rocks. The big ones make impressive sights as God sized pebbles dropped here and there in fields and woods. The small ones became mixed-in with the soil and made life a challenge for farmers trying to plow their fields. The immigrant Giacomos created a job for themselves and would collect these stones and stack them along boundary lines for land owners, making fields easier to use and support the 'good fences make good neighbors' theory.

With their money they purchased a large portion of land and made their first family home. The home I grew-up in was a kit house from the turn of the twentieth century built a few hundred feet from the original home on their large tract of land. With all the rocks already in stone walls, the second generation Giacomo family made a living by providing hay to the local homes for their horses and food from their farm at a small food stand along the nearby road. As more people changed from horses to cars for transport, more focus was placed on the food stand as it grew from an initially small shed to a small grocery store at a street corner just down the road.

This family had three children that I knew of. First son Marcus, who inherited the hay portion of the family business, Second son Joe who inherited the Grocery store, and Daughter 'Tina' who trained as a nurse and helped to lobby for a hospital to be built in our town. Marcus built his home at the far side of the hayfield, Joe had his home as an over head apartment built as part of the ever expanding grocery store, and Tina had her home at the far corner of the hayfield from the second generation house. When their father died, as they all had their own homes, they sold their father's house to my family who were seeking a larger place to live within a year of my birth.

As this house was part of the large tract of land owned by the immigrant family, it was built within, and surrounded by, the remaining Giacomo land. My family owned the acre of land surrounding the house and the medium length dirt road that lead from the main road to the house. But in reality we had access to everything else, the hayfield and the hundreds of acres of woods which made up the rest of the original Giacomo land. The only restriction we had was not to be in the hayfield when it had grown high enough that we couldn't be seen before it was cut for bailing. My guess is that was for safety purposes as they didn't want to accidentally cut us down with the hay cutter.

Uncle Ronny and Aunt 'Harriet' would visit us regularly during my childhood years and would even often join us for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Aunt Harriet would stay at the house and chat with my parents and Uncle Ronny would take me for a walk through the vast woods. I would later dub these 'nature walks' where we would meander and admire the sights while Uncle Ronny would talk to me about various things and he would also ask me about my life and listen to my chatter with interest. As a result of this attention, I would look forward to his visits and this became a routine. During the winter month visits, we'd just stay inside and visit but then I'd have to share Uncle Ronny with my siblings and father. Everyone loved Uncle Ronny... Aunt Harriet wasn't as popular. Though I never personally experienced it, the scuttlebutt was she talked endlessly and gave unwanted advice.

As my parents grew apart in my later single digit years and finally split by my preteens, Joe Giacomo became my next father figure. As my mother worked at the local grocery store, I would tag along on some days and watch the store at work and see Joe. When the business had grown so successful that it put the local I.G.A. out of business, Joe used the money as the only grocery store to buy-out another I.G.A. twenty miles away and open his first branch store. When this happened, my mother transferred there and had a larger role at the store, eventually working her way up to manager. In reality, my mother and Joe had been having an affair for several years and the new location took them away from questioning eyes. But I was unaware of this at the time and only knew Joe as a friend of my mother.

One Saturday I was bored hanging out at the branch store while my mother worked. I noticed the milk case was getting low and went to the milk cooler to get more milk cartons to fill it up as I had seen my mother do earlier that morning. As with the hayfield a few years earlier, I had assigned myself my own job. My mother encouraged this as it made her work less harried and even pointed out my stewardship of the shelves to Joe. Tickled, Joe rewarded me with money for my work. A novel concept for me as I was already willing to do the work to avoid boredom, but I wasn't about to turn the cash away.

This lead to my mentorship in the grocery industry by Joe. I learned about rotating stock so the oldest always sold first before it spoiled or got stale. I learned about meat and produce trimming, packaging, and morning review of the cold cases for outdated stock. I learned about ordering and the need to anticipate additional supplies for common, fast-selling items as well as those that sold more during various holidays. I learned about cashiering and how to count money and make sure the books balanced, though most of the time at the register I would just bag groceries and carry-out. And I learned about store maintenance needs, such as routinely sharpening knives for meat and produce, the need for cooling compressors to chill cases out front and refrigerate rooms in back, the occasional floor tile and shelf cleaning & repair. A few times Joe even took me on runs to buy parts and one time review a loader to be purchased.

Zack Hatch, my best friend's father, turned out to be the head of the math department at the High School. Against the will of my Middle School I had signed-up for 'Intro To Algebra' for my Freshman year of High School and by coincidence Zack was the teacher. While he had been warned that the class would be over my head by other staff and he would need to shepherd me to a basic math class within the first quarter, he found the opposite to be true. During my first three years of High School he quietly became my champion, defending me from the educational hierarchy who felt I had a 'place' and needed to be 'put in it'. More on my time with him later.

Then there was Ralph. When my mother moved from New England to Colorado, I would visit her during the Summers. And while she worked during the days, I would hang out at the local Radio Shack managed by Ralph. He let me use the display computers as he felt having a kid use them as customers came in made them appear less intimidating to the adults. Other than letting me use the computers and occasionally humor me when I wanted to show-off a program I had written, he really didn't have much of a role in my life. Still, when he moved to other Radio Shack locations in later years, I would hunt him down and say 'Hi' the following Summers!

And my actually father? He still just lived in the house, mostly, and was best when he was ignoring me...

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