Toughness

When Bruce called me “fat” in our sixth-grade classroom, thanks to having two older brothers, I was well prepared.
“Well, at least I don’t suck my finger in the sixth grade like you do!” I shot back, going right to his weakest point.
“Shut up!” he said, extracting his index finger from his mouth and shoving me. I wore a sleeveless dress that day, and his saliva glazed my bare arm.
A small crowd gathered. “You wanna step outside?” I taunted, knowing that I could take him.
“Yeah, right,” he said, retreating.
Bruce never called me a name again, and neither did anyone else. Not at school at least.

To the Best Family!

A toast to all of you - most especially Mom, Libby, and Johnny! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nothing But Time

With one eye on the football game, Dad tended the dressed turkey that turned on the groaning rotisserie. Mom arranged the place settings with gold-trimmed china and crystal that were called to duty just twice a year.
Deb and I had no responsibilities other than to appear at our Thanksgiving feasts on time, recite our gratitude, and indulge.
At her house, Deb’s dad sharpened his carving knife. Deb’s mom, up since 4:30 AM, peeled potatoes.
Deb and I strolled down the mellow suburban streets. We then followed a dirt path to the railroad tracks. With nothing but time and the November breeze, we talked and walked along the endless rails.

Blockhouse

On the blacktop, I spied a house of wooden blocks. “Can I come in?” I asked the boy inside.
“No! Go away!”
Rejected, I pushed in a wall block.
Soon the Yard Duty was hugging the boy, who clutched his index finger. We Kindergarteners mobbed around.
“He says that SOMEBODY pushed in a block on purpose. WHO did this?”
I remained silent.
The boy pointed his good finger at me, blubbering: “SHE did it!”
“Um, somebody pushed ME,” I said, cooking up a lie. “And, um, I fell.”
I was let off.
After a long absence, the boy returned to school. A gigantic splint and bandage shrouded his shattered finger.

My Strawberry! My Strawberry!

David B sewed a Strawberry for himself and brought it to school. He next constructed a Popsicle-stick house for it, complete with toilet. Several boys in our fourth-grade class delighted in kidnapping the crude lump of stuffed red cloth with two button eyes, and causing David B to squeal: “My Strawberry! My Strawberry!”
David B flunked tests and failed to turn in assignments. Our teacher was exasperated. David B spent hours in the school psychologist’s office.
David B was a bored genius, I learned, who was capable of eighth-grade schoolwork. His maturity level, however, was only that of a Kindergartener. Though this made no sense, it sure explained a lot.

Consequences

Gramps treated us, his four youngest grandchildren, to the rodeo. Our Wisconsin cousins, Carrie Lynn and David, were mild-mannered and polite for the entire excursion.
Without Mom to prod us, Mark and I couldn’t uphold our trumped-up civility. On the drive back especially, as we shoved, kicked, and belittled one another, we showcased some of our ugliest-ever backseat behavior.
Gramps was silent. He pressed down harder on the accelerator of his Ford Fairlane.
Back at the cabin, Gramps darted inside and we cousins frolicked in the grassy yard. Minutes later, an infuriated Mom came after Mark and me. She mostly spanked, uttering a few heated words about ungratefulness and humiliation.

Confirmation

David, Ira, Jim, and Scott were goobs. David and Ira were babyish and brainy. Jim wore coke-bottle glasses and was alarmingly quiet. Scott lisped and tried way too hard.
Just after lunch recess, Mrs. T sent the four goobs back to the playground. With them out of the classroom, she then bawled out the rest of us sixth graders on our shameful behavior. She insisted that we stop teasing those boys. She then called the four back in. They each looked mortified as they slunk back to their desks.
Though she surely meant well, all Mrs. T truly accomplished was to make official the outcast status of the four goobs.

Rush to Judgment

I kneaded the sealed bag of Fritos. Before sprinkling the pulverized corn chips into my peanut butter sandwich, however, the bag burst. Frito powder shot out, overlaying my desk and the nearby floor. The other kids laughed. It was about then that the patrolling Yard Duty peeked into our classroom. I was sent to the office for inciting a food fight.
Our principal stared me down before asking: “Do you behave this way at home?”
“Um, sometimes!” I offered, honestly.
“Well, you don’t do it here!”
Had I claimed otherwise, he was surely ready with: “So why do you do it here?”
I was ensnared, and that was that.

Piano Practice

I asked Mom for help with my piano lesson, and then I argued with her: “But Mrs. Kelly says to do it THIS way, not THAT way!”
At least my piano teacher, Mrs. Kelly, didn’t smell like horse poop like my oldest brother’s music teacher did. Her wrinkled hands trembled, however, when she marked in my lesson books. Each week my hands were also adorned with her ink squiggles.
When she’d finally had enough of me, Mom shouted: “Go to your room!”
As much as I hated facing that old upright, being sent to my room was worse. “I’ll listen now!” I begged. “Please let me just practice my lesson!”

Envy

With unadorned bamboo poles, Mark and I cast out into the stocked pond. My red-and-white bobber repeatedly plunged below the surface. The catfish were biting, and I gleefully yanked them in. Mark didn’t even get a nibble, however, and his mood shifted into self-pitying despair.
Dad’s first cousin gushed to Mark: “Why, you have the prettiest big eyes and the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen!” She then turned to me: “I bet you wish that you had your brother’s eyes.”
My haul of catfish was suddenly worthless. I would have willingly traded them all for Mark’s pretty eyes. Mark would have OK’d the deal too, if only it were possible.

Lima Beans

I sat to Dad’s right at the dinner table. It was an unfortunate seat, which allowed him effortless monitoring of what needed to be on my plate.
That night, it was lima beans.
“No!” I pleaded. “I hate lima beans!”
“You need to at least try them,” he insisted, lining up ten beans on my plate.
“I’ll throw up!” I sobbed, as I began choking them down. I don’t know what repulsed me more: their foul odor, rubbery skins, or mushy insides.
I puked on the linoleum floor, in Dad’s direction.
On her way to get a rag, Mom hissed to Dad: “Next time, you get to clean it up.”

What Do You Do, Daddy?

Whenever we kids inquired about his work, Dad’s reply was always the same. “Secrets,” he’d say, with a sly grin. I knew that Dad was an engineer, but not the train kind. His engineering was called aeronautical, and it was much harder to comprehend.
Dad guided us kids into the front yard one night. We huddled together on the driveway while he enthusiastically pointed toward some lights in the dark sky. He spoke about satellites and missiles, but his words made no sense to me. All I grasped was that my dad knew secrets about lights in the night sky, and probably not many other dads did.

Problem Solving

I didn’t do my homework, so Mrs. Cuddy drew a small chalk circle on the board. I had to then place my nose in the circle AND finish the overdue worksheet. “That will teach you,” she scolded, as my face smudged with chalk dust and tears.
I next failed to study for a math test. Terrified to be unprepared again, I faked a stomachache. Though Mom let me stay home, the thermometer displayed 98.6 F. She seemed skeptical.
I snuck into the kitchen. From the refrigerator, I grabbed and gobbled ten slices each of salami and bologna. With that, my stomachache was genuine and I was no longer a liar.

Ballet Lessons

Garbed in beginner’s black leotard and ballet slippers, I glided across the wooden floor in her dance studio. “DIP, toe-toe … DIP, toe-toe,” she ordered in her German accent, clapping out the beat.
My ballet teacher clenched a wooden pointer with a black rubber tip. When I plied at the barre, she stabbed my calves and thighs to perfect my turnout. When I remembered my arms (“strong tree branches”) and my hands (“delicate leaves”), she was unimpressed. I practiced positions first through fifth until they were as natural as walking, to no avail.
I complained to Mom. With loving kindness, she suggested that perhaps I should just stick with softball.

Revenge Gone Wrong

When the coast was clear, I tiptoed down the hallway toward Mark’s bedroom. I then positioned a thumbtack, pointy-side-up, in his doorway. My plan:
1. Mark would step on the tack, and feel pain.
2. I would not get caught.
Hours later, I heard a booming “OWWW!!!”
When I arrived on the scene, a barefoot Mom was on the floor. A blood drop replaced the thumbtack she’d just extracted from her heel. Hurt, she wondered who could be so careless. That her youngest daughter was a conniving revenge artist never entered her mind.
I saw no benefit to clouding her view, so I buried my guilt and tsk-tsked alongside her.

The Color Purple

The room was hushed as we fourth graders penciled through the big math test.
Not far into the exam, I heard the unambiguous sounds of someone throwing up. I looked in the direction of the eruption. A brilliant purple liquid glazed David S’s math test paper, his pencil, and his entire desktop. David S just sat there, ashen, too ill to be embarrassed. The watery, purple vomit dripped onto the floor.
On his way to the nurse’s office, bolstered by two escorts, an extremely feeble David S managed to mutter these words: “I told my mom not to give me grape juice this morning.”

Front Eagle Drop

The Front Eagle Drop resembled the Back Eagle Drop. You squatted on the monkey bar, gripped your hands, and then leaned forward rather than backward.
I was already well into the routine when I perceived the need for a reverse handgrip. I went into a free fall and crashed, face-first, into soggy tanbark. Shortly after impact, I stood up. Bark nuggets dangled from my throbbing face. I screamed. The Yard Duty dashed over, along with a throng of playground rubberneckers.
After my scabs healed, I avoided the monkey bars. Although I now understood exactly how to perform the Front Eagle Drop, I somehow felt happier jumping rope and playing foursquare.

Miss S

We rode back to school with Miss S. To us, her Mercury Cougar was as magnificent as a golden carriage. To sit inside that car, to be near Miss S, was breathtaking. Unlike the other fifth-grade teachers, Miss S wore colorful mini dresses and leather boots. Her shiny black hair was puffed in a bouffant, with perfect curls in front of each ear.
As we drove into the McDonald’s parking lot, Miss S announced that she had a surprise. We dumped our brown-bag lunches, and she then treated us to hamburgers and fries and milkshakes. It was our own little secret, said Miss S, and nobody else needed to know.

Another Mother for Peace

In 1968, before we mourned King and Kennedy, Mom took me to a “McCarthy Happening!” at the San Jose fairgrounds.
Mom was devoted to the antiwar candidate — making phone calls, going door to door. Dad favored Nixon. The TV pumped in the Vietnam War. Mom stuck a peace sign on our station wagon. Dad said that my oldest brother would achieve manhood by serving his country. Mom said, “Over my dead body!”
Being a fourth grader, I could not absorb much of McCarthy’s speech. So I just chanted slogans with the charged-up crowd. I already knew that he’d be the best president. Mom’s passion was enough to tell me that.

Irreconcilable Differences

On the first day of fourth grade, I picked up the new-girl-next-door. Joanne was still in bed, so her mom invited me to wait at their kitchen table. Joanne eventually shuffled in, eyes puffed and brown hair tangled, still in pajamas.
Her mom served fried eggs with ketchup. I felt nauseous watching the vivid-yellow yolks flow into a pinkish-orange pool on Joanne’s plate. Joanne then farted long and loud while eating—an unacceptable act at my house—and her exuberant mom announced: “Machine guns going off!”
We were late to school.
The next day, I walked alone. Delighted to be early, I romped on the playground until the bell rang.