In the early days, Don would be home at night while my brother and I slept. This was his time to be alone and he liked to blast rock n’ roll, a trait I surely would have respected later on, though it wasn’t exactly healthy for a sleeping school age child and an infant. One night my ten-year-old head awoke to the booming music of The Hooters “All You Zombies” and in my dazed half sleep I screamed like an old man for the racket to stop. It stopped and just like that I had effectively silenced Don’s night music forever. I don’t know why I reacted that way because I loved music. For years my mother listened to records during the day and exposed me to great music by Elton John, The Rolling Stones, and others. I loved music. Maybe I was rattled by the loud music at night or maybe it had more to do with my resentment and competition with a man who took my old life away from me.
I think he felt guilty for some time after, but later became rebellious and in an odd manner took on the persona of a kid himself. I was the adult telling him to turn his music down. Something changed in Don around this time. It was as if the silencing of his music one night stunted his adulthood and regressed him straight back into his teenage years. He was just twenty-four years old in a world I couldn’t imagine being able to handle at that age.
To begin with, he was a different kind of guy— more interested in politics than sports. His voice was softer and his skin seemed years younger. His floppy light brown hair and scrawny legs didn’t help his unfatherly appearance. People easily mistook him as my older brother. I guess he tried to do what he could for his image. One way of compensating for his look was driving brand new cars. His choice was a Cadillac— an old fogey kind of show-off car, but nevertheless luxurious. Every other year he upgraded and traded in the car for a new one with a different color. Some guys do that with girlfriends, but he only had one ex-girlfriend we knew of. She even came around once to visit. My mother threw her out and told her to never come back. Mom told me the woman was trying to win him back for some reason, even though she had been the one who supposedly dumped him. She said the lady had been abusive.
Cars were his passion. So it made sense that he made money doing something with cars. He was always polishing his own cars and wiping off smudges. It was a whole project every time we used his car. Afterward, he’d go through the seats adjusting seatbelt straps so they were straight, dusting off the seats with a rag, and checking the carpets for dirt. He would park his Cadillac across the street to keep it away from the neighbor’s cars. One year he had a white one, one year he had a black one, and then one year he had a maroon one.
One day the first of a string of vandalism events took place. They flattened the tires on the passenger side, which faced the shrubs. On a peek out my bedroom window I thought I had seen some motion around his car, and then later I saw some kids running away, but I naively ignored it and continued with the school project I was working on. The next time it was scratches, then a busted mirror, then a stolen hood ornament, then a bent antenna. You just didn’t park a car like that in our neighborhood, but he kept at it. The Cadillacs were vandalized over and over by street punks with nothing better to do than randomly destroy other people’s property— something I never took part in my punkish years. Flat tires, spray paint, key scratches, none of that was fun. I didn’t care to destroy someone else’s property. My philosophy was don’t bother anyone; after all, I didn’t want to be bothered myself. Don finally gave up the Cadillacs for a real investment as he called it, a Bentley. But now he would really have to keep an eye out for the punks.
6
UNLIKE THE GENTLENESS of my old friends in the old town, it seemed like the kids in the new town were rash and rough. Take the worst kid in my old town and put him on steroids and multiply him by two. The teachers weren’t so gentle either. Everything was crazier. The new school held air raid drills where a loud siren would go off and we were led out to the hallway and instructed to tuck our heads inside our knees facedown against the wall where apparently we would die more peacefully. Had my old school really ill prepared me for the nuclear attack in the final years of the Cold War by not conducting any of these drills? The new school seemed so much colder. No more carpets and decorations— just hard floors and brick walls. You’d think I’d moved to the city from the countryside, and even though it was much closer to the city, it was only twenty-two miles away in the same county— same old suburbs. But something was rotten in this town.
Right from the beginning, they gave me a hard time. The school district administrators wanted to put me back a grade from the middle of third to second. They claimed their school district was on a higher level and argued I wouldn’t be able to keep up. Even though I had state test scores that put me in the top 97th percentile. Even though I had all satisfactory grades. Even though we were in the same county in the same state with the same standards of learning. Even though the old town was far nicer with lower crime and higher ranked schools. None of those factors mattered. Their decision didn’t have any logic. Maybe they just wanted to punish me because they were superior and I was just some new poor punk they could toss around. I was probably just a number to them. They probably had too many kids in third and not enough in second. We didn’t even fight it. I was told, “just accept it and move on.” Is that a strike two or three? You take my old town, my lake, my friends, my cat, and now my grade. My mother couldn’t stand up to those bullies and there were other battles to be fought. Just fitting in with the students was going to be a battle in itself, but this would be for me to deal with on my own.
In school, I was pushed around by several kids the first year. Some of the kids were ruthless. Throwing things, kicking me as they walked by my desk, knocking books out of my hands. A kid named Aaron chased me at recess and then tried to sneak up on me from behind a metal garbage barrel. I kicked the barrel to scare him off and it smacked him right in the face. Aaron held up his hands and then looked down at the blood. I was the only one suspended.
I had broken another boy’s nose and this would cost me more punishment. At one point a mob of kids yelled “get him”-— only extinguished by the appearance of a teacher. The lash back lasted about a week. Kids have a short attention span.
$$$
I’ll never forget the first fight I saw. A kid named Mark in the grade above me took down this other kid named Bobby. Mark pinned him to the ground and hunched over him with punches. Bobby was bloody but refused to give up at first. Mark continued to bash Bobby’s head into someone’s front lawn until he lay motionless. At that moment, Mark seemed like the toughest kid in the world. It was a sickening sight— two little children really— one bashing in the other’s head. Bobby was so humiliated that his family took him out of school and moved away. The whole fight was apparently over something Bobby had said. I guess he misspoke. Better watch what you say around here. At least I didn’t have it like Bobby.
$$$The petty harassment went on until another new kid named Steven Roberts befriended me and chased my attackers off of the playground.
“Leave him alone,” he told them, and they listened.
“Don’t let them dorks bother you.”
“Thanks. I’m Jack.”
“I’m Steven. They don’t like me either. Who cares, right?”
Steven had moved to the town the year before and had had some incidents with the kids, but they knew to leave him alone. He was a loner, but a dangerous one. He was awkward as if he were years older than he really was. If he didn’t fit into the existing scheme of things he was going to start his own clan, and I was the start of it.
We found each other on the playground and realized we had an alliance. Kids immediately stopped picking on me. Though we were still outcasts, Steven and I began a path to respect. Our base of friends was limited, but it was only a matter of time.
$$$
Outside of school there was a kid in my neighborhood, who used to tell me on the street,
“I’m gonna tear your face off.”
He’d tell me this right before he’d chase me for blocks until I outran him through bushes, yards, and across busy streets. I ran like hell. I always managed to escape even when he had the advantage of being older