Here I Thought I Was Normal: Micro Memoirs of Mischief Read online

  Grandpa was beaming, ready to hand his two oldest grandsons surprise gifts. One gift was a kite and the other one was a…

  Nobody remembers because we both wanted the kite!

  My grandparents were working class folks who had happiness that money can’t buy. But Grandpa’s happy face quickly mangled into shock, confusion and then horror as my cousin and I battled back and forth with dueling words of “I want it – No, I want it!”

  It was a noisy and crowded room but my dad must have noticed the hurt in my grandpa’s wordless expression.

  Dad leaned over and whispered to me, “Smile, take the other toy and say thank you.”

  I looked away from the kite and up to Dad with a facial plea to reconsider but in an instant I saw, clearly, it was the right thing to do. I promptly complied. As soon as I did, relief spread across Grandpa’s face and suddenly I was happier than the kite would have made me. At least that’s what I told myself.

  Dad always helped people out. He basically knew everything about a home, landscaping, animals, plants, astronomy, you name it. I don’t know what he had done for Grandpa this time but Grandpa was very appreciative and offered my dad money while we were piling into the car to go home.

  “No-no, I can’t accept that,” Dad said, clasping his hands behind his back when Grandpa tried to hand him a wad of cash.

  “I insist,” Grandpa said.

  “I just can’t,” Dad replied, shutting the back car door. I looked out the window intrigued by this benevolence Dad was displaying. First the kite, now cash, why does he turn away such great things, I wondered.

  “Come on Sandy, just take it.”

  “No Cliff, I’m just happy to help.” Dad got in the car, waved and said, “Goodbye.”

  As we backed into the street, Grandma Joan was on the front steps making her signature “peace sign” wave goodbye that we would come to love as we all grew older.

  Dad’s refusal to accept reward for good deeds left a strong impression on me.

  Not long after, we were visiting my other grandparents at their home in a neighborhood near Cleveland’s Edgewater Park. Dad’s family was huge and many people visited weekly but we must have been the first ones there on this particular Sunday.

  I sat on the couch across the room from Grandpa Frank. He got up from his chair, something I rarely saw him leave, and walked toward me holding out a silver dollar. He smiled as he handed it out for me to take.

  “No-no-that’s okay, Grandpa,” I said shaking my head.

  He briefly held the same confused look my other grandpa had over the kite incident.

  After the pause, he took a step closer, leaned in and held the silver dollar out to me nodding that it’s okay and said, “Take it.”

  I smiled and slid my hands back a little on the couch and said, “That’s okay Grandpa, you keep it.”

  “Whattaya think I am some stranger off the street!” He was upset and I didn’t know why.

  The only thing I knew was that I was hurting his feelings by not taking it so I reached out, took it, smiled and said, “Thank you.”

  I could tell the moment for him was ruined. He sat back down and my dad walked into the room and sat next to me. Everyone was silent for a while.

  For the longest time, I didn’t understand when to accept things or not.

  The “F” Bomb

  Growing up, I don’t ever recall my parents using the “F” word. They would sometimes cuss but the “F” word was never uttered.

  That said, it’s only a matter of time before you’re exposed to it somewhere.

  My introduction to the “F” word was at an uncle’s house. It was one of those regular get-togethers we had with my dad’s side of the family. He had enough siblings to suit up nearly TWO basketball teams and I had enough cousins to suit up nearly TWO football teams.

  The adults would play games and joke around. The kids would disappear into the basement and have good times of their own. Kids being kids, when you learn something new, you can’t wait to share it. Well, one of my cousins learned a new vocabulary word. So the fun during this visit centered on this word that rolled off the tongue with ease. And it was always delivered with a smile. So our introduction was without context other than sheer fun. We ran around using it liberally on each other all night long.

  “You’re a little f---er.” Giggle.

  “Ya, well you’re a big f---er.” Giggle-giggle.

  “Get over here f---er.” “Make me f---er.” “What a bunch of f---ers.” Giggle-giggle-giggle!

  F---er this and f---er that, all night long. The word just brought joy to us all. We’d drop “F” bombs left and right – always with a huge smile or cackle of laughter.

  I had never in my life been called a f---er so much and enjoyed every minute of it.

  By the end of the night, as with most of these visits, we ran out of gas and ended up under blankets watching television. Bodies were strewn across the basement floor. Eventually, my parents came down to wake me and my sister to get in the cold car for the drive home.

  We were on the highway cutting through rural Lorain County. All was quiet even though I was wide awake due to the cold. The heat had not yet reached me from the front vents.

  “Hey Dad.”

  “What?” he answered while driving half asleep.

  “YOU’RE A FUCKER!”

  It’s a good thing there was no one else on the highway at that hour because the car swerved from one lane to another as if someone hit the old man in the head with a two by four. Then, he craned his neck to shoot a look back at me and the car swerved again. I could see in his face that he was trying to figure out what to do next. I knew none of the prospects bode well for me.

  Mom kept crying out, “He can’t possibly know what that means, he can’t possibly know what that means, he can’t possibly know what that means.”

  The car recovered but I don’t think Mom and Dad did.

  Boyhood Crushes

  I was interested in girls from the word go.

  In first grade, I let Denise and Beth know it. But with that information, none of us knew what to do with it. In about third grade, our teacher put up “mail boxes” for each kid in the class. I competed in a love letter contest to win Mary’s heart against my number one nemesis. He won.

  True to my young spirit and knack for adventure, my first kiss was with my babysitter’s daughter in my backyard pool – underwater! We thought that was so cool. Later, she stole my milk money before school. She made some sort of game with cardboard, coaxed me to insert my coin and voila – there it wasn’t!

  Also, I had the hots for my teacher. She was young, single and had long flowing platinum blonde hair. I even rode my bike to her window to give her an ice cream cone after school one spring day. Although I zipped from the store to the school as fast as I could, riding one-handed, the cone was soggy from half melted ice cream by the time I got there. She took it through the roll out window, smiled and said thank you. I was delighted. Ironically, I think that was the only parent-teacher conference my dad ever went to. He just wanted to see what this was all about, the crush not the grades.

  My biggest boyhood crush was for the high school girl who lived kitty-corner from my house. She had a gymnast pole anchored between two huge trees. She’d flip and twirl on that thing for hours. I would watch from my front steps. I was still in grade school.

  The high school bus stop was just a few houses down from mine. My mom had to drop me and my sister at a babysitter so we drove by it every morning. Waiting for the bus was the high school girl I had a crush on and her girlfriends. Sometimes, I wedged a handwritten love letter through a cracked window as we drove past. She picked it up every time. I could see her and her friends giggling until they faded out of view from my back window.

  My friend Eddie joined in my love letter campaign that summer. We began to irritate the high school girl. We would walk down a side street, sneak behind houses and around the side of hers to where she was sunbathing. S
ometimes she was facedown without her top on. That drove us nuts. Like two rambunctious boys, we darted out of nowhere, dropped letters on her body as we cruised by – startling the hell out of her – and sprinted back to my house. It was a game we loved playing with her but at some point, she had had enough. The line was drawn right after our sinister plot of splashing her with a bucket of cold water to see if she’d jump up, topless, failed.

  She offered a pact. One kiss and we leave her alone – forever! She was dead serious. It was a deal. We knew this was the end but hey, with a kiss, we could dream from that day forward. Eddie and I approached the side door of her house. We saw her brother peeking out a window. Eddie got embarrassed and ran away. I just clumsily flung myself into the garage door right there but I wasn’t leaving – no way.

  She came down the side steps in her shirt tied in a knot in the front showing off her bellybutton. I fell into a trance. She reiterated the conditions of the deal, making sure I was clear on things moving forward. I assured her my word was my bond and it was. Then, she leaned forward and down from the bottom step as I looked up and closed my eyes. I totally expected a kiss on the cheek which I would have been delighted with but she planted one directly on my lips. And it was everything I thought it would be. When I finally opened my eyes, head still in the clouds, I floated home.

  By the end of summer, the deal was still a deal. I honored it.

  Our cat had a litter of kittens and sometimes I’d play with them in the front yard. It was evening and I didn’t have the kittens. I was just lying back in the grass anyway. The high school girl came over because she thought I had the kittens out. She was with her boyfriend. She sat close to me in the grass and asked how my summer was going. Her boyfriend seemed to not want to be there. I know I didn’t want him there. I had pointed responses to her questions, trying to play cool. She got the message and left.

  The guy looked back at me so I stuck my tongue out.

  I was offended when he stuck his tongue back at me.

  Bulldozing Paradise

  My parents moved to Avon Lake before even the highway stretched that far west from the city. Over the years, it slowly evolved from a farm community to a full-fledged suburb.

  The first sign I ever saw that one day the woods would be cleared and farms would be paved was when my neighbor friend, Jacob, and I stumbled upon a tractor at the edge of our blueberry spot in the woods behind where we lived. Our blueberry spot was pretty much a secret. My family used to go back there, regularly, and pick until we filled one or two buckets each, Dad had four. The blueberries came in all sizes. Our freezer was crammed with plastic bags-full all winter long. Mom made plenty of blueberry pies. My sister and I later turned picking blueberries into a business. We picked fresh blueberries for Mom’s boss and co-workers. We even sold some to a nearby orchard so they could resell them.

  Our woods were a paradise. Often, I woke up in the summer when Dad was leaving for work, which was around 5:30 a.m. He had to drive to Cleveland. Sometimes, I went downstairs when he was still there. It always seemed to surprise him. But once he left, I left too. I’d run to a friend’s house and we’d go back to the creek to catch crayfish or just explore deeper reaches of the woods. We’d only come home when called.

  Our mothers used to stand on the back steps and holler at the top of their lungs something like, “Ro-o-o-ockyyyy – suppertime!”

  Voices carried far, echoing off trees and over open fields until we stopped, shushed each other and listened carefully for the second call to see whose mom it was.

  Waking up to see the sunrise allowed for about six hours of uninterrupted time to do what we wanted and go where we wanted, no questions asked.

  On this morning, we decided to hit a different stretch of creek than normal so we cut through the blueberry fields. And there it was; a backhoe-loader. Of course, we climbed all over it, got in the driver’s seat and pretended to plow things over. Almost without warning, Jacob started it and smoke gurgled from the pipe right in front of my face. We were moving.

  We were in a state of pure joy motoring deeper into the field, laughing all the way. It was surreal – until we wanted to stop. For some reason, Jacob couldn’t turn it off. We panicked. The machine slowly marched on. We watched the machine smash over brush, a wall of blueberry bushes, and it was headed for a tree line and just beyond that was the creek. I wanted to jump out.

  Jacob messed around with some controls and I gave a play-by-play of things we were running over. He only looked up when we made a severe roll downward and then back up as the terrain turned wavy due to an old grape vineyard that used to stretch across the land.

  About 20 feet from the trees and creek, Jacob brought the tractor to a complete stop and turned it off. We sat there like two farmers on a break, legs kicked up, laughing our nerves back to normal. What was most comical to us was the long path we made with the tractor through …everything.

  “Imagine when the workers come to find the tractor way out here,” I said.

  We laughed and laughed at the thought of it.

  Then, the imagery in our heads appeared before our eyes. There they were, far away but you could tell they were not happy.

  We casually jumped down from the tractor, waved bye and disappeared into our shrinking paradise.

  Grocery Store Playground

  The creek was long and on one side it had rolling hills. Shaped like three sides of a square, we’d pick it up at a corner where our trail led. There was nothing but a mile or so of woods between our backyards and this “playground.”

  One day, we followed the creek up around another of its bends. Next to the grocery store was the American Legion. This was the time of year they would have live fire shooting ranges – turkey shoots I think they used to call them. I imagine if you missed the target, the round ended up in the woods. They weren’t shooting so we didn’t have to get our feet muddy in the creek. The creek on this stretch had no hills but its earthen walls were steep, camouflaged by bushes and saplings.

  We decided to venture up to the grocery store. Men were at the dock unloading huge sides of beef. Out of the truck, they would slide one slab at a time down a cable attached to a hook. It would slam into the other slabs at the end of the tilted line. We sat on the concrete ledge and whooped it up when a good slam could be heard. We went nuts when meat parts flung off. The workers were grinning as they worked, letting us carry on.

  When they were done, they took a break so we slipped inside to see what happened next. The saw noise was deafening so when a guy yelled at us we only saw lips moving. We exited at the nearest door and were now inside the store by the meat department and a water fountain. We strategically hit an assortment of free sample tables and actually satisfied our hunger.

  Eddie suggested we play hide-and-seek. The game had never been this much fun. After a while, we decided on one more round. Then, we’d go back to the creek and woods.

  I found the perfect spot. It was the cereal section. I moved enough boxes to slide my body behind an outer wall of cereal. Then, I pulled one box over to hide my face. I was so proud of my creativity. I knew I’d never be found.

  About the time I was cramping and dozing off, I thought about ditching my spot to see what everyone else was up to. That’s when I heard someone closing in. They were onto me. They must have been. Box after box was being moved to see what was behind it, I presumed. My anxiety from the anticipation of being found was off the charts high.

  That last box I placed in front of my face was moved. I looked out and saw the slacks of a lady. She was holding the box between us. It looked like she was reading the back of it because staring at me was Count Chocola. I held my breath and remained motionless. I don’t know when she sensed me but when she did, she dropped the Count and screamed so damn loud, I felt like bursting from my hideout and sprinting for the exit. But my body would not move.

  In the manager’s office, I got a good scolding but before he was finished, someone came in and alerted him of more
boys creating mischief.

  He pointed at me and said, “Don’t you move!”

  He disappeared and so did I.

  Cautiously, I walked out of the office, looked around, turned the corner and strolled right out the front doors. Once I was in the parking lot, I sprinted around the far corner of the building into an open field heading for the woods. I kicked into overdrive when my friends flew around the opposite corner of the building and into the field. Three men were in hot pursuit. We made a “V” toward each other and the creek.

  We ran right up to the edge of the creek and jumped. We knew we couldn’t clear it and that wasn’t what we had in mind. We splat into the far bank, righted ourselves and splashed down the middle of the creek in the direction of the American Legion. The men weren’t far behind. They drew closer quickly, running along the upper edge of the creek peering down when their view wasn’t obstructed.