Display by Label: Childhood

When my dad and my grandpa used to mow the lawn, they would do it "bare-chested." That's what my dad would call it. And, as a boy of four or five, I was intrigued by this concept, that of bare-chestedness. Because I was keenly aware that while being in this state was something the two model men in my life seemed to do whenever they wanted, the women never did—my mom, my grandmother, my sister. Clearly, being in this state of bare-chestedness was one of those things only boys could do, along with the awesome faculty to pee while standing up. Damn we were lucky.

Of course, as soon as I discovered this, I too went bare-chested whenever I got the chance, because it was profoundly important to me to be like my dad. And even though I couldn't actually mow the lawn yet, I used to follow behind him with a plastic Fisher-Price model. And there I would be: jean-shorts, cowboy boots (which you had to pry off of me when I went to bed) and a bare-chest which, unlike my dad's, had no "fur" on it.

Just to be clear, my dad didn't wear cowboy boots when he mowed the lawn, so I'm not sure where that came from. I've since substituted the boots for New Balance or Merrell which I suppose in some ways is a real tragedy, but the rest of the outfit is pretty much the same: shorts and a bare chest—grunt. That is until recently. Because Jersey's weather isn't reliably warm in April, or even May. This year, the warm spring days have been few, and have been bookmarked by bouts of cold, wet rain.

So this weekend, as the clouds and wind gathered for another onslaught of the wetness, I sliced blades of grass in a long-sleeved cotton shirt and a red fleece sweater-vest.

Dad never told me there'd be days like this.

link to this | comments (5) | File:  Oogah  Lawn  Family  Childhood 

We learn some really strange songs in elementary school. Case in point: Miss Mary Mac. You know—the chick with all the black and the buttons and the elephants and fences and weird, weird shit. Remember this one? I do. And unfortunately, this little diddy has been rolling around in my brain for the past week or two. It's mainly due to the fact that our real estate agent in New Jersey has a name that can be shortened to "Mary Mac." And she has done just that with her email address. So when I send her an email, or receive one from her, the song lyrics to Miss Mary Mac immediately pop into my head. And so now it doesn't even take an email. The lyrics just remain there. For hours. Even in sleep, through elephant-filled dreams. And when I wake, wake, wake. They're still there, there, there. Damn you, Mary Mac! What cruel joke is this? I mean, I could easily make my email davycrockett at goaheadandtrytogetthatfreakinsongoutofyourhead.com. (He is, after all, king of the wild frontier.) But I've got some semblance of common courtesy, you know? Manners. And I wouldn't do that to my friends. Or my enemies.

Okay, so the deed is done. The song is here, firmly planted. So what of it, anyway? What of Mary Mac? And why? And whereto? And damn it all, what the hell? And so on and so forth. I mean, the significance, brother. What is it? Maybe a close-reading is in order.


I think Mary Mac was a Goth. Which is fine. Girls dressed in black turned out to be something I was quite fond of in high school and college. Maybe this song planted that seed. But I didn't know what Goth was in 1st grade. I did know black was dangerous. And that sometimes bad could be very, very good. And thank holy goodness for that. Because age 19 would have been much more boring without that knowledge.


If there is a gun in act one, it will certainly be used in act three. And if there are buttons in verse two, they will certainly come undone by verse ten. Okay, maybe not. But they would if my 6-year-old brain had anything to do with it. I blame school for my lascivious imagination. Because I've got to blame somebody. And my dad gets blamed for far too much.


It takes a lot more than fifty cents for me to see elephants jump over a fence now. But in elementary school, this seemed perfectly plausible. In fact, just saying the words made it so. Elephants jumping fences: it was that easy. The mere suggestion, and an entire world in which young boys and girls paid money to go see such things opened up before me. The grass was green. The sky was blue. And the weather was always 72 degrees and fair with no bugs. It was a world I could understand. And on some level, thankfully, I still do.


The moral here is, even if you're going to be subversive and weird, it's important to be patriotic. These elephants knew it. Mary Mac knew it. And, by God, I know it.

I never did the hand-clap thing that the girls did while singing this tune. Mainly because that was a "girl" thing. And if nothing else, I was always the spittin' image of macho, even through the years I maintained a rat-tail. I never once envied these girls for their hand-clapping adroitness. Or sat idly by wishing I too could clap like that. Not once. But they could sit there and make up verses to this thing and clap and keep it going forever. And by "forever" I mean the full five minutes or so when we'd line up between classes.

So, in that spirit, does anybody have their own lyrics they'd like to add? Try and keep it clean. You know, like the original.

link to this | comments (3) | File:  Childhood 

When I was a kid, every July 4th there was a big parade in our neighborhood. All the adults would team up by block and compete for who could build the best-looking float. And the kids would have their own competition by decorating their bikes with red, white, and blue crepe streamers and pinwheels. And lots and lots of American flags. I went all out on this decorating business, which is strange when I think about it now. I don't normally get too in to decorating or dressing up for holiday functions, like Halloween costume parties. But man oh man, the first year in that parade, I made my Incredible Hulk 'Big Wheel' the most patriotic looking Big Wheel the Norchester subdivision had ever seen. And I actually won a prize: a frisbee. I was proud as hell. I wish I had the pic of me sitting on that decked-out Big Wheel, frisbee in hand, huge smile on my face. But it's no doubt living in a shoebox or photo album somewhere in Texas.

One thing I realized that first year was that the other kids were giving up their Big Wheels in favor of sporty new bicycles with training wheels on them. I still thought my Big Wheel was pretty dang cool. So I wasn't really self-conscious or anything about cruising around the hood in that low rider while the other kids towered above me on their bikes. But I do remember being a bit frustrated that I couldn't go as fast as they could.

The next year, I had a bike. And like the previous year, I dressed it to the nines for the big day on the 4th. I'm not sure if I won a prize or not that year. But I do recall that my bike had training wheels. By then, of course, most of the kids had lost their extra bike appendages and were doing a strictly two-wheel thing. But I was always a bit slow in giving up any safety apparatus. Simply put, arm floaties were for swimming. And training wheels were for biking. These things were as plainly evident to me as 'the sky is blue' and my personal favorite fact, which I learned around age three or four, that men go pee standing up, while women go pee sitting down. I was endlessly fascinated by that knowledge and waxed poetic on the subject to anybody who would listen.

I was never really embarrassed about using my training wheels or riding my Big Wheel. I was remarkably unselfconscious about all that back then. I guess we all start out that way. I think it was my dad who finally realized he should probably help his son lose those wheels and join the ranks of the other kids. He was always the voice of reason. With him, wearing my cowboy boots to bed was not an option, and there was no way I could continue riding my bike with training wheels. If it were up to my mom, I might still be wearing my boots to bed, and peddling around Baltimore on a tricycle. I don't know how old I was when those wheels came off for good, but my guess would be five or six. I remember my dad running beside me as I shakily steered my way down our street, thoroughly freaked out.

Holy shit, that was invigorating. And altogether scary. And fun.

The next Fourth of July, I was no-doubt riding my bike in and out of the parade crowd with my best friend, Paul. And that year, I probably still decorated my bike, but not with the flourish of past years. Not because I was too old or too cool or anything like that. If anything, I cut back on the decorations because they got in the way of me doing my wheelies, skids, jumps, and other tricks. It's hard to be a hot-rod with crepe paper stuck in your spokes.

This weekend, I bought a bike. It's the first bike I've had in over ten years. And as I test drove it around the parking lot at REI on Saturday, I felt a little bit of that exhilaration rush through me again. For a moment, I was six years old, wind against my face, a little shaky, but a lot powerful. It was tremendous.

Now I wonder if there's a bike parade somewhere I can join. I'd be the tallest little kid there.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Childhood  Chewing 

When I was a little kid and I went places on vacation, I used to imagine that I had a miniature walkie-talkie device that would fit in the palm of my hand and that I could carry everywhere and it would connect me with my best friend at home. Back then, for the average 7-year-old, a device like this was more or less fiction, a product of my overactive imagination, but so were the reasons I might need to stay in constant touch with my best friend in the first place: usually some variation on the theme of my being an International spy.

The device I used to imagine back then, today is called my cell phone. I no longer need to use my imagination to conjure one up in my mind. Incidentally, just for the record, I also no longer imagine myself as a spy, traveling the world, embarking on dangerous and complicated espionage missions. But if I did, would it matter? Wouldn't that certainly make things more interesting? Somewhere along the line, reality has stepped in. It has made my cell phone boring and common place. And it has gotten in the way of all that free-form imagination that used to make the everyday seem exciting. Being in sync with the reality of things is a necessary part of growth, I suppose, but it's also kind of sad.

What's also sad is that today, while I have the exact kind of walkie-talkie device I used to imagine, while I'm one button away from the exact same friend of mine from 25 years ago, I only speak to him about twice a year.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Childhood  Friends 

Last Saturday, Cath and I went to New York to celebrate the birthday of one of my cousins, who was turning 60. It was a true New York Italian party, complete with an accordion-led band that played some great Italian Polkas. There was dancing, singing, and of course, eating. I regained contact with several of my cousins who I hadn't seen since 1991.

We drove back late Saturday night so I could catch an 8:25 am flight to Houston Sunday morning. Now New York had been rather balmy, but it was nothing compared to Houston. Houston - where outdoors is like a swamp and indoors is like a refrigerator. Houston - the land of always-on AC. My glasses fogged up as I walked outside the airport. Ah, yes. Houston. H-Town. This used to be 'home' and I needed no further reminder as to why I would never call it that again.

Paul picked me up from the airport. Paul and I have been friends since we were 4 years old. Throughout elementary school and most of junior high, Paul and I would hang out almost every day together. I have two blood-siblings, but if there were another sibling that I could name simply because of the shear amount of time we spent together during childhood, it would be Paul. It was good hanging out with him, but also strange - strange because of how different our lives were from 24 years ago when we read Mad Libs into a tape recorder during late night sleep-overs, or played an intricate game of 'can't touch the ground' after school. (The object of the latter was to go through every part of my house without touching the ground, as the rather unimaginative name implies.) Now here we were, on a plot of land that would soon be where Paul and his wife Erica's first house would stand. We stood on this property, now just a plot of weeds and dirt, and listened to the crickets sing their high-pitched songs through the grass. We remembered days riding our bikes in fields just like this in our neighborhood of Norchester, making jumps out of the dirt, riding until we were exhausted, covered in sweat. We'd cool off in the pool, eat, and go back out for more until there was no daylight left. At that age, we never minded the hot, Houston air constantly pressing down on us like some warm, damp sponge. At that age, we were invincible.

Sunday evening, after a day at the pool, and a Mexican food outing, Paul and Erica drove me back to my mom's house, where my mission of the week was to start: I am to clean out most of my junk and decide what needs to be kept and what needs to be tossed out. The impetus behind this weeding out of old things has to do with my mom's imminent move to Dallas.

Most of the stuff I'm finding is stuff that needs to be kept. It's taking a while to filter through it all, because I'm winding up looking at all the photos and reading all the journals. During third grade, we had to keep a journal in one of my classes and I'm so glad we did because it offers a great glimpse into that year of my life. Some of the entries are simply accounts of what happened that day, others are stories I made up.

Here's the entry from my birthday:

November 24th, 1982

Birthday!

Today was my Birthday! It was fun! I got a new tennis racket and a swetsuit. I played all evening with Paul and he watched me open my presents. When Paul left, my mom and I went out for mexan food my favorit. I have a specil waiter named jose and he was going to come and sing me happy birthday but i was in the restrooms. I was mad! But he brought me a sopapiya and put a candel on it and made it into a birthday sopapiya. Instead of a birthday cake. When we got home I read a book and went to sleep.

Pretty cool. So simple. Is that me?

Other interesting things I found included Star Wars figures, matchbox cars, Garbage Pale Kids, wacky pack stickers, lots of photos, and notes from junior high girlfriends.

This evening, we drove by our old house and my elementary school. I lived in Houston from the age of 4 until 18, so just driving around this area causes a flood of memories, things I haven't thought about in years. It's making me realize that it's probably good to eventually leave the place where you grew up. Otherwise, you'd constantly be confronted with moments from the past, constantly reliving old memories. It's hard enough for me to relive the memories of six months ago, much less 26 years ago.

I guess, in small doses, reflecting on those years is therapeutic. It reminds you of who you used to be, and in a way, reinforces who you have become. Every so often it's good to come face-to-face with your old self and get reacquainted.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Childhood  Friends 

I remember a Christmas about 20 years ago. As I type this, I realize, wow, I'm now at the age where I can say things like, 'I remember a Christmas about 20 years ago.' Anyway I was probably 9 or 10, and what I remember is that I was at my grandparent's house for Christmas and it was determined that I needed a haircut. Of course, I didn't think I needed a haircut. It was probably my dad who thought I needed a haircut. If it had been up to me, I never would have had my hair cut when I was young. Whatever the reason, I remember my dad taking me to the barber, an old black man with gray hair and fingers that smelled like cigarettes. I could barely sit still in his chair. It doesn't make sense now, but for some reason, when you're a kid, having your hair cut is almost the equivalent of having reconstructive dental surgery. How could this be? I'll tell you straight-up: I don't know. I mean, it doesn't HURT to have your hair cut, does it? Did it then? Have we all just forgotten? Are young hair follicles different from adult hair follicles? And over time, do we all just forget our tortured childhoods filled with visions of scissors soaking malevolently in alcohol, waiting to perform their deadly operations? Do you think?

Probably not. Still, it was not a pleasant ordeal for me, and just because I don't remember why or how this was so, doesn't make it any less true.

Anyway, I managed to sit through this hair-cutting business and, in the end, was terribly unhappy with the outcome. It's hard to imagine being pre-occupied with the way one looks at 9 or 10 years old, but it certainly was the case that I was not happy with my new haircut, and I felt downright out of sorts about the whole thing. I suppose it's the first time I remember being neurotic and therefore should probably be celebrated as a glorious beginning to an inspiring pattern of neuroses. It wasn't necessarily that the cut was too short; it wasn't even that the style was terrible. It was just simply that there was nothing very spectacular about it at all. This lack of anything striking really bummed me out. Certain bits stuck out in places where they shouldn't have. And other bits didn't stick out at all when they should have. It was just very disappointing.

And this is what I remember most about the whole thing: I remember telling my dad (probably because of the season), 'It's like a Christmas tree without the decorations.' So dramatic I was. I thought I was drawing such a poignant metaphor. Of course, my dad thought this was very funny and laughed, which made me all the more upset.

I don't remember much else about that particular Christmas. Most of my Christmas memories kind of blur together into one large category called 'Childhood Christmas' and are pretty much distinguished by the location of each. I probably had at least 5 or 6 Christmas holidays at my grandparent's house. But they all kind of meld into one 'grandparent-house-Christmas' memory. I have similar categories for 'Christmas Holidays in Houston,' 'Christmas holidays in Dallas,' etc. But that one line I remember: 'It's like a Christmas tree without the decorations.' In the end, all my feelings of unfairness in the world over the state of my hair boiled down to that one remark.

Two days ago I got my hair cut. It's like a Christmas tree without the decorations.

link to this | comments (3) | File:  Chewing  Childhood  Family