How I lost my curfew

If I would have described my parents as strict when I was sixteen, I see in retrospect that they simply cared about me. Like most good parents, they understood that children need rules. They need someone to say no.

Children thrive inside of healthy and reasonable boundaries, and caring parents create such boundaries because they recognize that chores, good manners, and, in their teenage years, a curfew don’t keep their children from expressing themselves but rather help them mature into well-rounded individuals.

The physical borders of the canvas determine what can be painted there. Poets use rhyme, meter, and line breaks to draw out unlooked for words and meanings. Constraints create rather than limit creative possibilities.

Is a child so different than a poem?

None of us lives in a vacuum, and we’ve had experiences with people who don’t play well with others. You may have heard someone say that children don’t have problems, only parents have problems: children amplify or illuminate their parents’ idiosyncracies and mistakes. The parents who believe in “free expression”—a decision to not spank their kids, which as I’ve observed, easily morphs into an absence of any discipline whatsoever—can handicap their children.

While the enlightened parents rant about the moral superiority of sparing the rod and the irreparable harm that violence does to children’s delicate psyches, their little jerks are interrupting the conversation, ripping toys out of the hands of other kids, or yanking on the dog’s tail. Cool. Thanks for providing our community with another egomaniac.

Without pruning, they grow wild and unmanageable like a forgotten hedge. One person calls it freedom, and another calls it neglect.

Teachers, coaches, and other parents will spend the next two decades trying to finish the job that the parents neglected, attempting to drive a few fundamental truths through the thick skulls of someone else’s spawn:

· Nobody owes you anything.

· Your entitlement complex will undermine your ability to maintain healthy relationships.

· Don’t think that you can trample social etiquette and then be praised for your boldness and originality; cool disregard for other people’s feelings and needs is not the same thing as “being true to yourself.”

· Temper tantrums are an unsophisticated form of manipulation; they irritate us and make you look foolish and immature.

Complete freedom is a mirage the same way true democracy is a myth. Even if we somehow managed to traverse the desert and attain that oasis, we would discover within it a pervasive sense of disquiet—a directionless, purposeless abandonment to our own whims and petty lusts. Left to our own devices, would we really choose altruism? No.

If we could do anything we wanted, we would either do nothing or destroy ourselves. Put a bunch of children in a room with no supervision and see if something doesn’t end up broken and someone crying. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is an allegory of men left to their own devices. Without discipline and fences, we are babies with breasts or facial hair. We must be taught that a life characterized by self-sacrifice and service to others is a life of richness and contentment.

****

The summer after my senior year of high school, I was dating a girl who had been accepted at Clemson. We both knew she’d be leaving, but we waited to break up until seven hours before she drove out of town. I would not recommend sprinting toward the cliff in this fashion, but that’s another story.

With characteristic shortsightedness, I spent every free hour I had with this blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty. The four cylinders in my ’88 Honda Accord LXI, “The Toast,” would whine as I raced my love-drunk self home, trying to cross the threshold before the stroke of midnight when the carriage reverted back to a pumpkin and my parents’ leniency might change into house arrest.

Since my bedroom was downstairs and theirs was upstairs, I had to go up and kiss one of them goodnight before going to bed. This was the way they checked the time and kept tabs on my nocturnal comings and goings.

Of course, they wanted to know who I was with and what we were doing, but if I called ahead to tell them that the movie had run over or that I needed to stop for gas, they wouldn’t convict me on a technicality.

My dad is a heavy sleeper, so when I came in late, I often went to my mom’s side of the bed to kiss her goodnight. The blessed darkness hid my lips, which always felt heavy from kissing my girlfriend.

My goal was always to be as quiet as possible. They needed to remember in the morning that I had satisfied the requirements of our arrangement, but I wanted drowsiness to prevent them from focusing too much on the exact time of my arrival.

Sleep, my pretty, sleep. Don’t worry about the time. Let’s not get caught up in minutes and seconds. Sleep. Sleep…

One night, I got in about 12:15am, which wasn’t too bad, and I crept upstairs to say goodnight. My mom would typically wake up when she heard me come in the room, but this time, she stayed asleep.

I put a hand on my dad’s shoulder and gave him a gentle shake. He shifted and sighed but didn’t wake.

“Dad…” I whispered.

Nothing.

“Dad.” A little bit louder.

Nothing.

“Dad!”

He opened his eyes.

“I’m home,” I said.

He just stared at me.

“Good night.”

“You have spots on your face.”

“What?” I asked.

“You have spots on your face.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Dad, I don’t have spots on my face.”

“Yes, you do.”

“C’mere to the bathroom, and I’ll show you.”

He lifted the covers off himself, rolled out of bed, and in a strange role reversal, followed me to the hallway bathroom like an obedient child.

Once I’d flipped on the light, he stepped in and we looked at my face in the mirror.

No spots on my face.

“See, I don’t have spots on my face.”

“Why did I think you had spots on your face?”

“I don’t know.”

He laughed.

“Go on back to bed, Dad.”

“Okay,” he said.

“See you in the morning.”

****

A few nights later, I came in about the same time and went to my dad’s side of the bed. The same as the last time, I shook his shoulder. Once. Twice. Three times…four.

He never woke up, so I went back downstairs and went to bed.

The next morning at breakfast, he said with an overtone of accusation, “You didn’t come up and say goodnight when you got in last night.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, I don’t remember.”

“I shook you like five times, and you never woke up.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

He had no choice but to believe me, because he knew I never lied to them.

We never had a formal conversation puting an end to my curfew After that brief exchange, I stopped going up to say goodnight, and my parents never mentioned it. The lifting of my curfew carried a note of sadness: I was growing up. I didn’t have to race home anymore, run red lights, keep out a keen eye for the Brentwood fuzz who loved nothing better than pulling over punk high school kids who might have some booze or weed. I had my parents’ trust, and discovered that being trustworthy is a lot less sexy than being irresponsible.

What would life be without rules to break? What would we do for fun?

Life is like pulling teeth

Consider the phenomenon of teeth-pulling: an older, larger, and stronger human creature offers to snap a bone off your face.

No wonder kids find the whole experience terrifying. Adults have even developed a special lexicon in an attempt to disguise the trauma. After “working” on a tooth for a minute, the adult tells the child, who now has tears in his eyes, that it’s “not ready,” meaning, “All the pain you just felt accomplished nothing. You now have six or seven days to dread the repeat of this exercise.”

To make tooth-pulling seem less like punishment, adults created Tooth Fairy. Whether the prize was a quarter or a five-dollar bill, they believed that the promise of wealth would assuage their children’s fears. How typical.

I didn’t like the idea of any strangers being in my room while I was sleeping. I don’t care if you’re a leprechaun, troll, or the Tooth Fairy. Wearing velvet and having a fat bank account changes nothing. Where I come from we have one name for people who hang out at night in the rooms of other people’s children: Pervert.

“I’ll spend the money if you leave it, Mr. or Mrs. Tooth Fairy, but I’d prefer you just keep your filthy paws out from underneath my pillow. What do you do with all those teeth anyway? Sell them to Oscar Meyer for use in their hotdogs? Go find friends your own age, you sicko.”

One time, I decided to pull my own tooth.

I tied a piece of dental floss around the loose tooth, then gave it a tug to see how much force was necessary. Yikes! It was still in there pretty good. Plan B was to tie the floss to a door then slam it shut.

As I was pacing around the den trying to psych myself up, my older sister Elizabeth walked in the room.

“What’s that?!!” she asked, but before I could answer, she grabbed the floss hanging from my mouth and yanked on it.

Sure enough, the tooth flew across the room and landed on the carpet. Not knowing what else to do, I burst into tears.

“I was going to pull it!” I yelled. “I was going to do it myself. Why did you do that?”

“Well, now you don’t have to worry about it.” She smirked and walked off.

She received no punishment, and I found a dollar underneath my pillow. This is the world we live in. I’m sure I’ll have to pull some teeth one day, distracting my little ones as though I were about to give them a shot. “You’ll feel a small prick. What’s your favorite color? Okay, there, all done.”

I’ll also probably find myself using other grown-up propaganda like, “This hurts me worse than it hurts you,” and “You’ll understand when you’re older.” Will I understand or will I just stop asking difficult questions?

Despite the borderline lies and clever half-truths, parents must carry an open wound in their hearts for their children. No matter what lengths they go to to share their own experiences, provide instruction, and protect their little ones, they still must send them out into the Savage Land of bullies, cliques, and crushes. No one writes a manual on how to navigate with grace and poise the hurt and disappointment of that fly ball you dropped or piano recital you botched.

Kids never know what they’re supposed to be feeling or how they’re supposed to act or what any of this is supposed to mean. Nothing can prepare you for the endless procession of traumas and triumphs that is childhood: getting made fun of or ostracized at school; getting your heart broken by a girl; not making the team; not getting the part; not winning the election; listening to your parents fight. Kids would eat their vegetables every night if it meant avoiding these rites of passage.

At least when your uncle tries to pull a tooth that’s not ready, the pain is temporary, and you know who to blame. I’m still waiting to find money under my pillow for all the other bloody noses and ugly heartbreaks. I should have racked up at least a couple million bucks by now. I have a hunch that I’m the only one keeping track.

Rather than give my kids money, I’ll share with them what I’ve learned: the less you blame others for your suffering, the more space you will have in your heart to store up joy. Your heartache does become money. In looking for ways to listen well to other people’s pain and quiet it, you will experience healing. Lay down your life, and you will gain it.

If that doesn’t do the trick, I’ll buy them ponies.

Puberty is a dark room

When I was going through puberty, my nose changed shape. I tracked down my mom and shared this alarming discovery:

“Mom, I think I need to go to the doctor. I think I’ve broken my nose! It’s been straight for as long as I can remember, but now it has a bump in it!”

She reassured me that my nose was not, in fact, broken, and that when our bodies start maturing, our facial structure also goes through some changes.

How could either of my parents have explained puberty?

“Oh, by the way, in the coming months and years, your balls will drop, and your pee-pee will develop a mind of its own and will never do as told. Your relationship with this organ will be best described as ‘love-hate.’ Also, you’ll grow hair in places you’d rather not discuss, even with your pediatrician, and your voice will sound like somebody took it out of your throat and whacked it a few times with a hammer. The bones in your nose, cheeks, and brow will swell and change shape forever, and you’ll soon discover that girls do not, in fact, have cooties. On the contrary, they have boobs. For many years after, boobs will somehow be the center of the universe. This will seem ridiculous to you because when your mind rises from its fog, you realize that they are simply sacks of fat with milk-producing glands designed to sustain new life. You cannot, of course, seek help in divining these mysteries from the people who carry them around. You will come across either as a pervert or a weirdo. So, please just bottle up your confusion and do your best to navigate, well, your whole existence while obliterated on a cocktail of hormones. Oh, and don’t screw up. After all, our family has its reputation to consider. Prayer and scripture might help, but you will feel guilty when in the middle of Philippians your mind wanders and you realize you’re thinking about boobs. Again. We’re your parents and we love you and we just wanted to give you a heads up. And remember, you can tell us anything.”

“Yeah, sure. I really want to sit down with you and go over the smorgasbord of sexual lore I’ve picked up at school. Please confirm what’s true and pluck out any misinformation. We can get some bubble gum ice cream at Baskin Robbins, watch The Goonies, and make an evening out of it. I’ve put it down in my calendar. Can’t wait.”

No one I know got a thorough briefing on puberty or sex. A man named Dr. Leeper came to David Lipscomb Middle School a few times to arrange some transparencies on the overhead projector. “Here are the different stages of sexual development for males.” A pack of 6th and 7th grade boys ran down the checklist in their heads to see how far they had progressed and how far they had to go before this affliction called puberty would desist.

“Okay, I’ve sprouted a few pit hairs and woken up horrified that I’d wet the bed at fourteen years old, but then upon closer examination, I discovered that I’m now at Step 4 on Dr. Leeper’s development chart. The horror! The horror!”

[Joseph Conrad was onto something in Heart of Darkness, but it had nothing to do with colonialism, self-worship or the depravity of man.]

One year, Dr. Leeper made the mistake of opening up the floor to questions. He may as well have chummed shark-infested waters, drawn a knife across his forearm, and jumped in. Every smart-aleck in two grades finally had his opportunity to confirm or disprove certain urban legends which I won’t discuss here.

I came out of those sex ed classes thinking that line drawings of women’s internal architecture looked like something that would grow on the ocean floor, something that looked like a vegetable but was carniverous. When we compared notes with the girls, who had endured through their own sex ed classes, we found out that they knew even less than we did.

“Vulva? Fallopian tubes? Don’t those go somewhere on an engine? Sounds like an import, maybe a Ferrari.”

All you wanted was to be cool and to avoid sticking out in any way. You don’t know what you’ve done to deserve punishment, but it must have been very bad. Puberty is a dark room where a teacher you don’t know calls on you to answer questions that you didn’t hear in the first place.

“Welcome to adulthood, children. We hope you enjoy your stay.”

6th grade was hell

The 6th grade was a bad year for me.

I hated middle school in general. Even though I went to a public elementary school, my arrival at a private Christian middle school in the 5th grade signified my miseducation in matters pertaining to sex, girls, profanity, cruelty, ostracism, tribalism, sarcasm, and all the other -isms and social spasms you can imagine.

The school itself was fine. The vast majority of teachers were kind and truly cared about the students. The problem had more to do with the age group than the particular setting. If William Golding had chosen a Christian island for Lord of the Flies, then he would have had no less material. All the brutality and moral depravity gains more subtlety.

Left to our own devices, we use our creativity to invent ways to consume one another.

We may never have killed a wild boar and smeared its blood on our faces, but we did orchestrate a lie so that one of the boys in our grade would be led to believe that both boys and girls have menstrual cycles. For boys, this was called “shooting your dot.”

****

“Billy, have you shot your dot?”

“No?”

“Hmm. Guess that means we’ll have to kick you out of our cliques and pretend like you don’t exist. Sorry about that. Check back in with us in a few months. After a few more gauntlets of hazing, public humiliation, and paperwork, we’ll consider letting you back in. To be one of us, you have to be a real jerk, and you’re too kind, compassionate, and gullible. We really need to stamp out your trust in other people.”

****

I got made fun of all the time. Admittedly, some of my comebacks were less than clever. That time I changed the lyrics to Peter Frampton’s “Baby, I love your way” and sang it to Adam trying to deliver the death blow? Yikes. If I had been a spectator listening in on this playground altercation in front of Harding Hall, I would have used the words of the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade after Donovan drinks from the wrong cup and his skin melts off like cheese and his skeleton explodes. In a dry, British accent, Robert Eddison says, “He chose…poorly.” Indeed, I did. I had one foot in high school before I lived down that lameduck comeback.

Don’t let me forget puberty. Thanks to mandatory chapel services every day, there was always a chance to read scripture, lead singing, or pray in front of an audience of my peers. Without fail, my voice would crack. I’d be reading a passage in Luke and reveling in my rich, new baritone and then KAPLOWEY! My voice would jump an octave.

[“Who was it? Which one of you just kicked me in the groin? I wanna know who it was! God, I thought you loved me, and then this? Again?”]

Sixth grade got off to a decent start. I got Mrs. Bornstein for homeroom, which, I was told, was best-case scenario. We went to church with her. She lived in our neighborhood. I already had an in. Great. “Maybe this year will be better than the last.” [Counting Crows, “Long December,” Thank you, Adam Duritz, for your optimism. I wish it had been true for me.]

Foolish little boy with my naive belief in people’s goodness.

I brought some of it on myself. For example, when Mrs. Bornstein went out of the room one day and left us to work quietly on our homework, I took the opportunity to climb up on my desk and shake it, shake it. I figured that I had a good 5 minutes of tomfoolery. In the words of my dad, “Wrong-ola.” Mrs. Bornstein had forgotten something she needed for her errand and walked back into the room right as I was settling into my groove.

She jerked me right down from my glory, and from that day forward, I had to go with her whenever she left the room. To copy papers in the main building, to visit other teachers, to grab something from her car, I was the ignoble one who had gotten caught. The pariah of shortsighted choreography.

Mrs. Bornstein told my mother who later told me that these were some of her favorite times during the day, when the two of us left the classroom to take care of the endless procession of details and administrative task that make up the life of a teacher. Apparently, when you separated me from my peers, I was a sweet, polite, precocious youngster who talked to Mrs. Bornstein like an adult.

Talking was something I was good at. I finished up the 6th grade with 27 conduct marks, meaning that over the course of ten months, a teacher recognized my exceptional gifts for disrupting class and ignoring directions. If conduct marks were grades, I was the Salutatorian, bested only by Lauren, who broke 30.

I came in 2nd in the spelling bee because I misspelled “Leviticus.” I added an extra “c”: “Levicticus.” That “c” stands for “C’mon, you idiot” or “cad.” I’ve never entered a spelling bee since.

I was always in a pickle, but sometimes, it wasn’t my fault. Out on the playground one day, I found a tomato hornworm moth caterpillar that resembled a bright green hotdog with white stripes. I was carrying this prize around on a stick and showing it to people. Making the girls say, “Oooh, gross,” was passion of mine then, and still is, really. The whistle blew, and recess was over. What to do? Mrs. Bornstein was walking in front of me on our way back into the portable. I was in the middle of scheming how to smuggle the caterpillar inside the classroom when she turned, saw what I was carrying, and said, “Put it down, Austin.”

I should have just dropped the stick and the caterpillar along with it. That was have been the shortcut. Instead, I held onto the stick and tried to sling the caterpillar off of it. That little booger had a good grip. I shook the stick a little harder. Then, as in all those moments that don’t go according to plan, time snapped into slow motion. The caterpillar finally flew off the stick doing somersaults in the air. Higher, higher, forward, forward—it landed on Mrs. Bornstein’s shoulder. She felt it and looked at her shoulder. She then let out a scream that chilled my blood. I never heard a dying horse, but I think it would sound like my 6th grade teacher with a green striped hotdog on her shoulder.

How did this happen? I was trying to do exactly what she’d asked. Naturally, she didn’t believe a word of it.

O Cold Silence of the Heavens!

My younger sister started at David Lipscomb Middle School that year. One of the bullies in my grade, Carter, started picking on her, nothing mean, just a little flirtation. Guess who got to tell him to stop? This guy. My mom told me that I needed to stick up for my sister and protect her, so the next day at school, I walked up to Carter and said, “Stop talking to my sister. She doesn’t like it.” He was so surprised that he just stared at me for a few seconds before he responded, with a touch of sheepishness, “Okay.” That was the end of it. Phew.

I wasn’t a bully, but I also wasn’t a poster child. On the one hand, I made high enough scores on the standardized tests that my teachers told my parents how special I was. On the other hand, when David refused to let me borrow a pencil during Mrs. Anderson’s Geography class, I grabbed a handful of his shirt and yanked him out of his desk.

Of course, Mrs. Anderson came back in the room right as he was getting up off the floor.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded.

And I was in trouble. Again.

It was in Mrs. Anderson’s class that I cheated the second and last time of my academic career. We took a short quiz on our homework, some pages from Island of the Blue Dolphins. I couldn’t remember the dimensions of the island, so I took out my paperback book, found the answer, and wrote it on my paper.

When I got my quiz back, I’d made a perfect score. Then, I started to feel guilty. I erased the answer I’d looked up then wrote in my first answer. I walked up to Mrs. Anderson’s desk and showed her my quiz.

“You counted this one right, but I think it’s wrong.”

She smiled and replied, “My mistake is your gain.”

This made me feel even worse, but I was a coward. I never told her the truth. Maybe I should give her a call today and let her know.

Dancing on my desk, lame comebacks, Conduct Marks, puberty, caterpillars, bullies, my moral decay—none of these was as bad as betrayal—getting pushed under the bus by one of my closest friends. Let’s call him Andy.

On an ordinary day, after taking a test, Andy and I walked to Harding Hall to use the restroom. We’re standing side-by-side at two urinals, and I turn to ask him how he thought he did. He said that he thought he did okay.

We finished up, washed our hands, and went back to class.

Over the next few days Andy spread a rumor that he caught me looking at his penis while we were peeing. This, of course, was ridiculous. All I had done is ask a run-of-the-mill question about the test we’d both taken.

I became the new scapegoat. If I had a dollar for every time one of my former friends walked up and with a sneer called me “gay” or “faggot” or “homo,” I would be rich right now. I could have started a college fund for myself and gone to school anywhere in the country. I don’t remember getting my feelings hurt by the names themselves. Middle school kids are unoriginal and predictable with their villification. They have small vocabularies, and after the first few skirmishes, you know what to expect. I think I just got sick of trying to ignore them. Even insults lacking cleverness will wear down your patience and poise after while.

I confronted Andy about the whole situation. At first, he denied any involvement. Idiot. We were the only two people in the bathroom. Later, he admitted that he’d told some people.

“But that’s ridiculous, Andy. You know very well that nothing of the sort happened. All I did was ask you about the test.”

The amazing thing? He agreed. His justification for what he’d done was that he needed to take some of the heat off himself. In a truth-or-dare game a few weekends before, he’d admitted to masturbating. Our two friends who were also present lost no time in violating his confidence and telling everybody. Their motivation? A smoke screen. Both of them had also discovered autoeroticism, but kept this fact from Andy. They diverted attention from themselves by betraying him. He made up a story about me to give our classmates something else to talk about.

Knowing why did little to make me feel better. After awhile, people found something else to talk about, and I was never able to monetize all the jabs about homosexuality. Too bad. I hated urinals for years, especially those troughs you sometimes come across in stadiums and locker rooms. Stare straight ahead. Focus on the boogers people have wiped on the tiles. What do they resemble? A hippo? Pamela Anderson?

I suppose 6th grade settled into a routine. I got a mild concession in gym class. I had a cute girlfriend named Christina who I’d met at the pool the previous summer. She was in the fifth grade and froze up every time I talked to her. Our infrequent phone conversations were filled with awkward pauses, so I made a list of questions to ask her. My older sister found this list and thought this was the funniest, dorkiest thing she’d ever seen. Whatever.

I want to gather every middle schooler in the world in a giant arena and give a speech:

“I’m sorry. I hated middle school too. Let me give you some advice. 1) Trying to be cool is the biggest waste of time imaginable. I wish you’d take that to heart and just be yourselves, but you won’t. 2) Don’t spread rumors about people. They’re rarely true. Don’t be cruel. I don’t care if people have been cruel to you, don’t be cruel. 3) Only girls have menstrual cycles. 4) If you must insult someone, do it with style. Never, never, never sing an insult, especially not one based on a cover song by Big Mountain. 5) Stand up to bullies. 6) Don’t cheat. Cheating makes you stupid. 7) Puberty does end. Ask your parents about sex, not your classmates. 9) Violence is self-perpetuating. It accomplishes nothing. People hurt you because they themselves are hurting, but that’s no excuse. 10) Middle school is like a snapshot of the world in all its messiness, ugliness, hurt, and beauty. Without Jesus, we are hopeless. Thank you.”

[I exit the stage, shiver, and offer up a prayer of thanks for making it out of the arena without being killed and roasted on a spit by middle schoolers.]

Thermometer? I’d rather die.

Talking to Rachel last night, I realized that sharing certain occurrences from childhood—out of context—enables you to see them in their true light.

Telling an objective third party makes you see just how ridiculous certain precautions actually were.

If we got sick when we were small and young, my mom mistrusted the temperature reading she got by asking us to hold the thermometer under our tongues. We must have fidgeted, which would, of course, mask a life-threatening brain fever or onslaught of flesh-eating bacteria from the Eagle Nebula.

The remedy?

She stuck it in our butts.

Seriously?

Sheesh, I’m embarrassed even thinking about it now. Talk about a shiver running down my spine: watching her use Vasoline to lube up a piece of glass with mercury, a harmful element, inside. Knowing that I would have to lie on my stomach on the den floor and wait as she administered this device which was supposed to be a part of the cure.

Nonsense.

“Yes, I feel like garbage. Oh? What’s that you say? I’ll magically feel better if you stick something up my butt? Okay! Sounds peachy!”

Oh sure, and then Michael Jordan is going to come to my birthday party and carry me around on his shoulders. 

Could all the doctors, scientists, and inventors not cast a care to all the poor children out there stretched out in all their shame in the most frequently traveled room in the house with only Granny Dean’s afghan to cover their fragile pride?

Granny Dean’s afghan had holes in it, so the thermometer could stick through. Our tiny bums were like creme-colored hillocks skewered by a radio tower. I was getting a signal and a message alright: never tell anyone that you’re sick. Terrible things happen to tender places.

There’s a thought that will put the chill of death in your bones: Dad walking through the den and oopsy! wasn’t watching where he was going and stepped on the thermometer and drove it like the point of a spear through the delicate tissue of your something-you-need-intact-to-be-a-confident-adult.

It could have happened. Seriously.

Holy crap. I can’t believe the modern kid doesn’t have to go through this rite of passage. They get a slight tickle in the ear canal, and voila! no more cause for concern. 

“No, Mom, I don’t have a fever. Even if I did, I’d rather die from it than endure another one of your medical treatments.”

I know she did her best. My dad, too. But for the love of all that is holy, please don’t stick glass in my butt! Not in the name of science, not for the sake of my health. Just please let me die here with my dignity intact. And no, I don’t want any orange sherbert and Sprite. 

Thanks for nothing, 1980s.

Secrets for entrepreneurs

The secret to entrepreneurial success is simple:

Look for gaps in different industries and sectors of the business world. Think of possible solutions—the means by which you can fill these gaps. Snoop around and see if anybody else has noticed the same gap. Research these competitors and then offer a solution with superior performance, a lower price, or a better value.

Always keep in mind, price and value are two different animals.

I discovered this foundational business practices in elementary school, but every time I started a new business, my mom would shut it down. 

Let me share two examples.

Even in our current era of fiber optics and high-speed internet, iPhones and social media, people are still more likely to read a book recommended by a friend. People talking about the hottest new book creates a buzz, and the buzz spreads like a virus by word of mouth. Second graders are no different. Johnny reads a new book by Judy Blume or Roald Dahl or Maurice Sendak, and he tells Beatrice about it. She reads it and tells Mary. Before you know it, Johnny has started an underground movement. The very foundation of the library at W.P. Scales would quake as spoiled children rushed into the library clamoring, “I want it now!”

I was an enterprising youth, and I quickly made two very important realizations: 1) the librarian would let you check out a book more than once without returning it and 2) she would tell you who had the most popular books checked out.

“Why were these insights important?” you ask.

Once I knew the current keeper of the latest Buzz Book (BB), I could use my formidable powers of persuasion to talk him or her into letting me have it next. I was such a nice guy that I would even save these little lambs the trouble of taking the BBs back to the library. I would do it for them! then check it out in my own name.

Now, here’s the crux. Pay very close attention. When the other children asked about the BB, who had it? Yours truly. I’d check it out for weeks at a time. Who knows how I explained myself: “I’m a slow reader.” [Not true.] “My mother died.” [Not true.] “I’m astonished by Potter’s complex layering of metaphorical language and Peter Rabbit’s religious and socio-political nuances that she uses to challenge Gnostic heresy.” [I'm not even sure what that means.]

What matters is that I persuaded my peers and colleagues to pay me dimes and quarters—depending on demand and inflation—to rent the library books from me for a day or two. My piggy bank was filling up fast.

I’d barely even put the finishing touches on my system for keeping track of who had which book and for how long when my mom discovered my newfound wealth and snuffed out my startup. She thought it was unfair to the other kids. Nonsense. Why should I be penalized for capitalizing on their sluggishness? Early bird gets the worm. Fast talker gets the good books. 

I nursed my wounds in secret, and cooked up another scheme. You can’t keep me down for long.

When I saw a new opportunity, I pounced.

Origami was all the rage at school. I knew how to make a throwing star, and no one else did. I charged a premium for this expertise. The acoustic tiling in the classrooms rained money. I’d stockpiled $21 in an old pencil box before my mom found me out again. Sweet Child of Thor! Why couldn’t she just let me do my thing? I was racketeering my way to Fun-Dip and baseball card paradise, and all she could think about was unselfishness and friendship and sharing. Lame-O.

I work for a marketing, branding, and advertising firm now. I’ve joined Entrepreneurs of Knoxville. I’m like a predator hiding in the tall grass. I will make piles of filthy lucre, and you know what I’ll do with it?

Buy some candy, pay off my parents’ mortgage, and find creative ways to give away the rest. My mom was is one of the least selfish people you’ll ever meet. She loves to give. Giving is one of her passions. One of my passions is making her cry with happiness. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to make my mama cry. I’m going to make her proud.

Sorry that just got so sentimental, but seriously, go make your mama proud. Start a smart business and change people’s lives. Be unselfish and share what you earn.

That is all.

Banana Fo Fana

My parents were baffled.

Aside from being headstrong and unresponsive to discipline, they said that I was a sweet kid. For the most part, I did what I was told. More often than not, my irrepressible boyishness made them laugh, most of the time in disbelief. For example, I taught myself how to tie my shoes when I was three years old. My grandfather gave me Luna moth cocoon, and even though my parents said it was empty, I knew better. There was no hole in it! Moths have to chew their way out. So, I put it in a shoebox, and sure enough, a large powdery green moth with fuzzy antennae and tails on its wings hatched a week or two later. I trapped my sisters in their rooms by tying doors together across the hall. I built treehouses. I ordered the largest knife I’d ever seen from an ad in Boy’s Life. The pommel, which had a compass in it, unscrewed from handle. Inside was a survival kit including matches, fish hooks, fishing line, and a whistle. I tore up my face sledding off a three-foot high culvert a week before school pictures. What could they do but laugh?

One night, they got a call from my 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Bunny Ward. I’d been saying some naughty words at school.

Neither one of my parents has ever used profanity, except when repeating a story and only then with their voices lowered and no small discomfort. They wondered where on earth I’d learned the words that Mrs. Ward herself refused to say. She must have spelled them. I can’t imagine my 1st teacher saying, “Austin dropped the f-bomb in class today.”

They sat me down and asked me about it.

Of course, I had no idea what those words meant. I was just rhyming.

What?

Lightbulb.

I told my parents that I was just plugging words into the Banana Fo Fana rhyme. For example, who knew that what came out when I used the name Mitch, a boy in my class, offended some people. I was big into cartoons at the time and had no clue that silly, innocuous Donald Duck, when riding aboard the ship Fo Fana, could become the mother of all cusswords. We always knew he had it in him.

“Duck duck bo buck banana fana fo—[_ _ _ _]—me my mo much…Duck.”

My parents were relieved that I didn’t know what I was saying. They probably told me that if I needed to rhyme at school, I should do so in my head.

Apparently, somewhere in between building a block tower, learning to read, and nap time, I was cussing out the other kids without even knowing it.

I was destined for greatness.

Pure genius

My genius as a child consisted not only of my proclivity for revolutionary ideas but also of my knack for identifying and nurturing the brilliant ideas of others.

When Will Burton came over to play and suggested that we throw all of my younger sister’s dolls into the Little Harpeth River, I knew he was onto something and put his idea into action immediately. We gathered up Laura’s dolls and tossed them into the creek one by one. They sank to the bottom. Ours was a shallow and slow-moving creek.

Satisfied that our work was done, we went back inside and were apprehended within seconds by my mom. She marched us right back outside and down to the creek where we waded in and retrieved the soaked and muddy dolls.

My sister wept, I got a spanking, and Will was sent home. He also received a spanking.

Sometimes, innovation comes at a cost—a Madame Alexander doll with soiled britches.

Bunnies and Puppies and Parents, Oh My!

My younger sister had all the pets that I didn’t want.

She had a guinea pig named Molly who she dressed up in doll clothes and pushed around in a stroller. If you’ve ever seen Dumb and Dumber with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, you’ve heard what you thought was the most annoying sound in the world. Lloyd Christmas demonstrates for a hitchhiker trying to kill them on their trip out to Aspen.

I assure you that guinea pigs are even more annoying. Not at first, mind you. At first, they’re a novelty. Then, you realize that the only noise they can make is a shrill, rusty Weeeee-weeee-weeee.

Laura once left Molly dressed in her Sunday best and strapped in the stroller all night. My dad lectured her about responsibility and taking good care of animals. He’s the most responsible person I know.

Laura also had rabbits. The first rabbit, Gus, a very sweet little guy with mostly white fur, died within a few days. He brought an illness with him.

Charlie, who was brown, and Sam, who was black, came next. They brought diversity to our family.

They survived long enough that my dad located a rabbit hutch made from 2×4s and chicken wire. He put it in the backyard under the locust tree. He moved it once a month because the rabbit droppings killed the grass. We always had one or two yellow squares of dead grass in our backyard.

This was a small price to pay because Laura seemed to really enjoy the rabbits.

That is, until the incident.

I could charge the story with drama, but I’ll get to the point: a neighborhood dog jumped our fence, ripped open the cage with his teeth, and ate Charlie. Simple as that.

Laura was, of course, angry and horrified.

My parents located the owners of the dog, an older couple. They agreed to pay for a new rabbit.

Laura didn’t want a new rabbit, she wanted Charlie back. My parents were in a bind.

Our Shih-Tzu Button came to the rescue. He escaped from the fence, found the older couple’s grandson, and bit him. No joke. What are the odds? Button had never bitten anyone in his life. Button never left the yard. In fact, he wore a trail on the inside of the fence because he always wanted to watch what was going on in the outside world.

Our next door neighbors had twin little girls, and even though Button’s rabies test came back negative, my parents decided to put him to sleep. I know that boy he bit must have been antagonizing him somehow, throwing sticks or rocks, calling him a piece of Shih.

So the Church family was minus one brown bunny and one black and white puppy.

We now had one big, black rabbit who would claw the blood out of you.

My parents’ solution?

Release Sam into the wild.

Good call, Mom and Dad: teach your kids a lesson about laws of nature and how the food chain works by placing a well-fed domesticated animal at the edge of the woods on our cousins’ property in Green Hills.

***

“Excuse me, Mr. Doglike Creature. What are you?”

“A coyote.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Mr. Coyote. Can you please tell me when they serve dinner here?”

“Right now.”

Suicidal newts

I love amphibians.

Talk about versatility: they can live in water or on land. Although I wouldn’t normally endorse Kevin Costner movies—excluding Dances with Wolves and Field of Dreams—I should confess that Waterworld is a guilty pleasure of mine, along with every other bad action movie produced since the mid-1980s—excluding Eragon and Troy with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom. Costner’s character, known as “Mariner,” has gills behind his ears. He can breathe underwater. We presume that some cataclysmic natural disaster has melted the ice caps and flooded the whole earth, but Mariner can swim to the now submerged cities and bring back the world’s most valuable commodity: dirt.

That’s pretty sweet, you have to admit.

However, long before the movie premiered in 1995, I was nurturing my obsession with frogs. Catching one in the creek behind our house fueled my little tank of boyish joy for weeks. I remember running home with my prize, bursting through the backdoor, and racing around the house until I found my mom.

“Mom! Look–what–I–have.”

I would open my hands. “I caught a frog.”

“I see,” she would say. “That’s great, bud! Where did you find him?” She was always so good about mustering enthusiasm.

“Well, I was fishing behind Mrs. Culp’s house, and I got my lure tangled in a tree, so when I waded out to get it, I saw…” and my lengthy explanations continued from there.

I created a trap for the frogs that sat on the edge of a tiny pond draining into the creek. A trashbag with a string tied to the end closest to the pond ran a good distance away to a tree. The plan was to sneak up behind the tree, and if a frog was sitting on the trashbag camouflaged with mud and grass, then I would jerk the string, causing one side of the bag to flip over the frog. I was bummed every time I creeped up army-style, elbows and knees, to discover that all the frogs were safe in the scummy water. All I wanted to do was catch them. There was no need for them to be rude.

I begged my mom and dad for a small aquarium, and they acquiesced. My mom took me to an exotic pet store on Nolensville Road to look at all the rare creatures. I decided on a pinkish albino frog. Maybe he reminded me of myself. If I held him on his back, I could see his purple veins and his pea-sized heart making his translucent chest jump.

Frogs don’t shed. They don’t stink. They have short life spans and thus are useful for teaching little boys about mortality. They are good listeners and never argue. They make eye contact. They never bite.

Frogs are ideal pets.

Newts, on the other hand, are problematic.

I transitioned to Fire-Bellied Newts after the frog died. They seemed pretty cool at first with flames running down their stomachs and their sinuous ways. They were the vintage muscle cars of the amphibian world. Sometimes, you can’t judge the cuckoos by looks alone.

They have an inferiority complex because they only cost $2 apiece at Pass Pets in Cool Springs Mall.

Oh, I was excited at first, taking the knotted plastic bag from the clerk, my mother beaming down at me, my slippery friend suspended in aqueous animation. Everything seemed perfect.

Up to my room went the fire-bellied newt. Into his new home—a plastic bowl complete with two plastic beaches, a plastic palm tree, and a red plastic bridge, suitable for romantic evenings for two or contemplative evenings for one.

Newt paradise.

A week passed, the newt disappeared.

First question: Do cats eat newts?

All you can do is say, “Bad kitty!” and take another trip to the mall.

I got two newts this time. Why not?

They seemed content in Newt Paradise, just chilling all day on the beach, catching some incandescent rays.

We made sure Bubba the Cat stayed away.

A few days and one went missing.

Total newts purchased: 3. Newts accounted for: 1. Newt #3 went AWOL soon after. What was happening?

I found one dried and shriveled into black jerky underneath my bed, another behind my bookcase, and the third, the hardiest of the bunch, all the way across my room between a pair of shoes in my closet. I gave them everything, but all they could think with their limited educational opportunities and delusions of grandeur was “Give me liberty or give me death.” Pathetic.

Booger Box

Boys are disgusting.

I was one of them. I can attest.

1) A Masochistic Preoccupation with Bad Smells

My best friend Hunter broke his hand playing basketball in the gym at Brentwood Hills Church of Christ. He was always pulling back the edge of his cast trying to get me to smell it. He would smell it and wrinkle up his nose, “Whew, that reeks. Smell it.” When I declined, he would use the smell he’d offered me to take another whiff. 

2) Morbidity

After Hunter’s parakeet Ricky Bob died, his dad picked a spot in their backyard overlooking the Little Harpeth River and buried him in a shoebox. Hunter and I dug up the shoebox at regular intervals to get grossed out by Ricky Bob’s progressive decay. A couple of weeks passed, and he looked like a dog had used him for chewing gum. A month after the fateful day, his brittle white ribs were showing through his feather jacket.

3) Bodily Functions

This one goes without saying. A juicy fart is the apex of humor for boys, ages eighteen and under. On our eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C., we succeeded in lighting a fart. Aside from the smell of burning hair, it was adolescent hand-eye coordination at its best. The flame was electric blue. 

A righteous belch—IBC Root Beer out of the bottle is particularly helpful—comes a close second. If you’ve ever watched The Simpsons, you know Barney, Homer’s alcoholic friend. You also know that belches can provide pivotal plot transitions and are punctuation unto themselves. I’ve heard belches that ripped the fabric of space-time in undiscovered universes. All that you can do is say, “Amen,” as you bow your head.

4) Urination

We would climb out onto Jonathan’s roof from his bedroom window for the sole purpose of peeing from two stories up. Now, repeat this exercise in the most unusual places you can find. Compile a mental list to share with friends.

5) Boogers 

I never ate my boogers, but I always imagined that they tasted like seawater. As far as I know, Hunter never tasted his boogers either. He kept them. He had reserved a tin candy container for that purpose. Our name for it? The Booger Box.

It disappeared for several months, and momentous was the day it reappeared while we were rummaging through the closet up in Hunter’s rec room. Hunter opened up the Booger Box, and what we saw was confusing at first. All the boogers had grown fur. Yep, each one of the now indistinct boogers was now wearing a fleece jacket. 

All this seemed normal to us at the time, but I’m happy to announce that ours was the only Booger Box ever known to man. We were making history, first-man-on-the-moon caliber stuff, and we never even stopped to savor the moment.

Please be nice to Mary

Be careful about making accusations in front of a third grade girl.

Ms. Holloway was my third grade teacher. Will Burton swore he saw a pint bottle of Jack Daniels in her desk drawer. Although he may have been making it up to have a good story to tell, alcohol abuse would explain why we learned nothing in her class. Let’s see, I remember planting Impatients outside near the playground. I organized stacks of National Geographics from the 60s and 70s. Apparently, I had earned these “privileges.”

I remember playing Number Munchers on the Tandy computers in the classroom even after Ms. Holloway started teaching. My best friend Hunter and I were finally back in the same homeroom, and we both had to go to the principal’s office after making a disparaging remark about Chris, the new kid. He and Ryan Schmidt got into a wrestling fight on the kickball field, and even though Ryan ate his boogers and had hands so dry that his skin cracked and bled, we were rooting for him. At one point Ryan seemed to have the upper hand, and to encourage him further, we yelled at Chris, “Yeah, take that fat boy!”

Well, Chris passed on our little moniker to the principal. We were summoned, and in an effort to illustrate the gravity of the situation, she asked how we would like to be called “String Bean.” I, for one, could have cared less if someone called me a “String Bean.” This insult lacked that special zing important to verbal warfare at W.P. Scales Elementary. Hunter and I laughed all the way back to class. In retrospect, I don’t think we were very nice children.

At the Christmas party put on by the room mother, my nose bled into a bowl of M&Ms while I was filling my plate with food. When I got back from the bathroom, the bowl was in the same place, but all the candy was gone. For years, I believed that all my classmates filled their unsuspecting bellies with my blood.

Who knows. Maybe the room mother saw everything and threw out the M&Ms.

Ms. Holloway needed all the help she could get. She asked me to be in charge of the computers. I was home sick one day, and my mom got a call. Who was it? Ms. Holloway asking if my mom would bring me in for just a few minutes because she didn’t know how to turn on the computers and she needed them for class that day.

She would disappear from class for inexplicable reasons and would sometimes ask me to read the answers to the previous night’s math homework. I would sit on the front of her desk and swing my legs while I ran a finger down the page of her teacher’s edition.

One day, I left class to go to the bathroom. When I got back, I noticed that a boy on the opposite of the room from me was using my pencil. Why would he take it?

I was having none of it.

I walked right up behind him and demanded, “Give me back my pencil.”

“It’s not yours,” he said.

”Yes, it is. Give it back.”

Mary, who was sitting to this boy’s right, took my side. “Give him back his pencil.”

[Thank you, Mary.]

“It’s not his, it’s mine. Leave me alone.”

He then turned his attention back to me, which was a mistake because, seizing her opportunity, Mary grabbed the pencil in question, raised it above her head, and drove it point first through his t-shirt into the muscle on his right shoulder. It stuck there like an arrow.

The boy screamed bloody murder, all heads snapped our direction, and Ms. Holloway waddled over.

I don’t remember much of what happened after that except that the guidance counselor came and took Mary and the boy to her office. Somehow, I was forgotten in the fracas and simply walked back to my desk.

Lo and behold, my pencil—which, to my credit, did look exactly like the one the other boy was using—was on my desk where I left it. All that for nothing. A case of mistaken identity. Happens all the time, right?

The guidance counselor came back for me later in the day. She asked me what happened, and I told her the truth. I thought that he had taken my pencil because we were using the same kind. I was mistaken. Mary stabbed him.

“About that…,” the guidance counselor said, “Apparently, Mary has a little crush on you. I only tell you that because it helps explain why she felt defensive and wanted to protect you. So please be nice to Mary.”

She sent me back to class, and Mary reappeared a day or two later.

I never mistreated her, but I kept my distance after that. Girl was crazy.

Smooth move, idiot

Never entrust your sense of humor to people you don’t know.

I attended W.P. Scales Elementary from Kindergarten through the Fourth Grade. At the end of every year, each grade invited the parents to the special presentation the grade as a whole had been working on for weeks.

One year, we wowed them with a square dance in the gym. Rumor had it, Amanda B. was crushing on me, and that’s why she chose me as her partner. She was a pretty blonde girl about six inches taller than me. Holding her hands felt like digging a soda out of a cooler full of ice. “Cold hands, warm heart”? Well, her bloodpump must have been hot enough to make Satan green. With envy.

I also have hazy memories of performing on a stage of some sort—costumes made from construction paper; singing songs about American freedom or Johnny Appleseed; the tone-deaf kid causing all the songs to bottom out, bless his heart; flashes of light from the dark, gently quaking audience.

Another year, we painted a map of the United States on the playground blacktop that doubled as a basketball court. Each state was a different color. We were very proud.

On the big day, the parents met us in our respective classrooms, then we filed out in a mass of excited children and faking-it parents. I lost my parents in the tumult and ended up walking beside a girl from another homeroom.

An overweight woman was lumbering up the hill in front of us, one step at a time. We had to slow our pace to keep from bumping into her.

I turned to the girl and said under my breath, “Boy, that lady is struggling,” and chuckled to myself.

Her eyes flashed daggers as she responded, “That’s my mom.”

I slackened my pace to let my new friend walk on ahead.

My Last Spanking

My parents did not spare the rod.

I’m not complaining though. As far as I know, I turned out all right. I can’t think of any weird fetishes or phobias.

My stayed at home to take care of me and my two sisters while my dad brought home the bacon. They had three kids before my mom was thirty. People stopped her at the grocery store to tell her how cute we were and what hard work it must be for her to babysit all three at the same time. Their eyes must have popped out of their heads when she claimed us as her own. She weighed right at 100 pounds when she was married. Imagine a slender, former college cheerleader with long, chestnut hair in high-waisted bell bottoms and a striped rugby polo with a white collar. That was my mom.

Apparently, I was a “handful.” She tells me that I was really sweet, just headstrong. Let’s say, for example, that she caught me eating Oreos in the pantry. “No more cookies. You’ll ruin your dinner,” she would say. I probably still had my eyes locked on the jar, wishing I’d gotten there just a little bit sooner, or that I was wearing pants with pockets.

“Do you hear what I’m saying to you?” 

“Yes, ma’am.”

Satisfied that she’d made her point clear, she would go back to doing whatever she was doing. My mother is a miracle-worker when it comes to cooking and sewing. I’m not trying to reinforce gender stereotypes or anything. I’m just saying she was good.

Well, I apparently would wander off as though I’d taken her admonition to heart.

Until she let her guard down again, then back to honey pot.

She would, of course, catch me a second time.

“I thought I told you not to eat any more cookies. Didn’t I tell you not to eat anymore cookies?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then why did you eat more cookies?”

“I wanted some.”

“I’m going to have to give you a spanking.”

“Okay.”

She’d give me a spanking, but pretty soon, she’d find herself involved in this or a similar scenario.

“Spanking never seemed to work with you. It’s almost like you didn’t care. You understood that this was the consequence of doing what you wanted to do, and you were willing to accept this consequence.” She says that I was rarely disrespectful, and I always told her the truth. Discipline simply had no effect. 

She speculates that she spanked me four or five times some days. She’d call my Dad at work: “I don’t know what to do. I spanked him three times before lunch.” He told her to use him. She’d threaten me with spankings from him.

When I received said spankings, I might cry or pitch a fit, but I’m told my stubbornness remained.

I only remember being spanked a couple of times. I guess it was so normal to me after awhile that there was nothing special to remember. How many times do you remember brushing your teeth? You know you did it, you just can’t remember many specific instances.

One time, I laughed at my younger sister making the Walk of Shame from the kitchen through the den to the bathroom. We always got it in the bathroom, to save us from the embarrassment of the rest of the family watching or listening. I thought, ”Finally! Somebody else getting a spanking for a change!” The respite afforded me so much pleasure that laughter bubbled out of me. Wrong move. My dad yanked me into the bathroom next. 

The last time I got spanked I was eleven or twelve. I was taller and stronger than my mom at this point. She must have known this. I probably picked up on it. It was only a matter of time before we transitioned into grounding and losing privileges, the two classic punishments for your average American adolescent.

Anyway, I forget what precipitated the event. Depending on how old I was, I probably smarted off—a new trick I learned at David Lipscomb Middle School—or called my older sister a fattie.

Mom was scrambling to find the new paddle they’d borrowed from my great-grandparents. Thing was a whopper. You could put a small pepperoni pizza in an oven with it. The first time they took their eyes off of it, I’d hidden it underneath back issues of National Geographic in the cabinets in the den. I was no dummy. That wooden behemoth never touched me.

All she could find was a thin wooden paddle for which I’d redeemed tickets at the skating rink. The rubber string and rubber ball had fallen off. A child about my age stenciled a blue eagle on it, no doubt somewhere in Taiwan.

My mom sat down on the commode and bent me over her knee. (We did everything the old-fashioned way.)

When this cheap paddle made contact with my backside, it snapped in half.

[Never do what I'm about to tell you.]

I started laughing.

When your mom is pissed out of her mind at you, do what you need to do to cork it.

Maybe I was a dummy. The comic relief was too much. My mom had just broken a paddle across my butt. Who has the privilege of saying that? It was easily the most important moment in my life up to that point. (I was baptized soon after.)

As you can imagine, my mom wasn’t laughing. She didn’t appreciate the sweet irony of breaking one of my broken toys across my caboose and that while trying to teach me a lesson.

Her face filled with red like a thermometer.

She was too filled with rage to even speak in normal tones.

She growled something through clenched teeth that sounded like, “Go to your room.”

I was happy to oblige. I had several Roald Dahl stories to finish reading.

She never spanked me again, which is probably for the best.

Uh-oh

Growing up with two sisters and no brothers was difficult for a boy with a vivid imagination and a penchant for pranks. Don’t get me wrong, I love my sisters. They’re two of my best friends. However, when I hit them, they would just cry.

Bor-ing.

All I wanted was for them to hit me back. A scuffle, a few kicks to the shin, a little give and take—is that too much to ask for? Something more inventive than a tittie-twister. How about a charlie horse? A sucker punch in the stomach?

Oh, okay, you running to tell on me to Mom and Dad again. Well, that’s original.

One year for Christmas, my parents bought me a remote control truck, a monster truck with knobby tires and admirable ground clearance and a bar of plastic lights above the windshield.

My truck bogged down in grass like any other vehicle in its class, but buddy, on concrete or asphalt, it could move. Great acceleration, nice handling. My truck could even land jumps from a modest height, which is better than the garbage you had.

My truck battery was recharging in my room. I went upstairs to get it, and as I was carrying it back downstairs, I saw my older sister sitting crosslegged on the floor, watching television. Her back was to me, and here I was with a monster truck and a battery full of juice.

I had an epiphany. I’d play a joke on my sister.

I sneaked up behind her and buried the rear wheels in her long, brown hair. I then pulled the trigger on my remote control. 

The tires made a whizzing sound as they accelerated, and I thought, “Uh-oh,” as her hair turned into a bird’s nest around each black tire.

When she started screaming, I panicked. I flipped a switch, putting the truck in reverse. Unfortunately, the truck cinched itself even tighter against her scalp.

Her volume went up another 50 decibels.

Fight-or-flight, fight-or-flight. I ran for it.

My truck had to be cut out of her hair.

Johnson’s Baby Shampoo

An unfortunate event occurred one day at Wildwood.

Wildwood was our neighborhood swim and tennis club. I took swimming lessons there. I learned how to play tennis and ping-pong. My two sisters and I were pool rats. Unless it was raining or my mom had errands to run, we were there, especially after we got old enough to ride our bikes the three quarters of a mile down Harpeth River Drive.

My best friend Hunter lived three doors down, and his family had a membership at Wildwood too. I had no brother and he had no brother, so we stuck together. On the days Marco Polo or Sharks and Minnows didn’t seem that appealing, we would take our fishing rods down to the pool. The Little Harpeth River ran behind the pool, and we knew a few good spots for warmouth, smallmouth bass, and bullhead.

On this particular day, we’d decided to swim the same as everybody else. Wildwood had the same rules as any other pool: No running. No glass outside of the eating area. No food in the pool. When one of the lifeguards blew the whistle and yelled, “Rest Period,” that meant all of the kids under sixteen years of age had to get out of the pool for fifteen minutes. I guess that gave the few older people at the pool a chance to do a few laps in peace.

The wind was blowing, making our wet skin cold, so Hunter and I ran to the bathroom. We were quite proud of ourselves actually, the idea being to stand under the hot water in the shower until we heard the whistle blow again. Side by side, with the steam curling up to the ceiling, and the sunlight slanting through the dirty windows above the lockers, we reveled in the warm.

Someone had left a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo in the shower, so Hunter decided that he might as well wash his hair if he was going to take a shower. He flipped the top and squeezed some into one palm.

The viscosity was all wrong though—too watery. He leaned in for a sniff, and his face puckered.

“Ah, it’s pee!” he screeched.

Of course I died laughing, and when out of his own frustration he tried to squirt some on me, I ran out the door.

My best friend almost washed his hair with urine.