(I'm Back) Christmas Candy

I have to be in a good mood to write these, it has been a long time, in fact I have felt a little guilty for enjoying things now that my dad is gone, but I know my dad would want us all to be laughing as much as possible and enjoying life. Every time he saw me his first question was always, "are you sad?" He did not want his family to "catch" the sadness that he had found in his lonely bedroom. In an attempt to make my dad happy and not be sad I will attempt to take the lighter side to life once again and enjoy each moment.


Christmas Candy

My mom loves Christmas candy. She will tell you that she likes to cook Christmas candy, but in all reality the only reason that she likes to make the candy is so that she can eat the candy. By the end of December each year I can always tell the time of year by the extra pudge in my mother’s cheeks. She will spend weeks making caramel, fudge, English toffee, toffee, turtles and homemade hot chocolate. As a child I loved to eat this candy, everyone loved to eat the candy including the tiny mice that lived in our home. If we ever forgot to cover the fudge it was easy to spot the little mouse footprints where the mice had been; the footprints became more of a trade mark than a nuisance.
“Wow, thanks for the candy,” people would say, “I love how your mother always puts her trademark on the fudge, it’s like I’m eating expensive European candy.”
“Yum,” I would reply having always been one to use few, but meaningful words.
My mom would make us run plates of candy to all of the neighbors, in this sentence the word “neighbor” means anyone who lived within a two mile radius of our house. It took hours and hours of labor to deliver all of these handmade treats, hours which came free to my mom so she really didn’t care about the enormous burden that this tradition placed upon me and my siblings.
One winter the weather was so bad that I was sure that we were off the hook, the least that would happen would be that my mom would drive us around to the different houses to deliver her goodies. My jubilation, animated as it was, did not last for long.
“Boys the plates are ready for special delivery,” my mom called as if inserting the word special would make us feel noble about our chore.
“But what about the snow?” I complained.
“Don’t worry about it, the treats they are wrapped in extra layers of plastic wrap, plus your dad has welded a couple of umbrellas to the red wagon so that the candy will stay nice and dry.”
“Oh, that’s just wonderful,” I replied, “but what about your children?” I replied.
“SPECIAL delivery,” she mouthed in an over exaggerated manner.
“I’m special,” Marne stated.
We all looked at her with a “we know you are” look.
“I apologize mother, when you put it that way how dare I complain. What a wonderful opportunity this will be for us to deliver your candy to your friends,” I answered in an extremely fake sounding voice.
“That’s better Bryan, I am glad you see it that way.”
The argument was fruitless, if it came down to saving the kids or the candy mom would rush the Christmas goodies out of the burning fire well before her own children. Out the door we went, I was wrapped in three coats, four scarves, two pair of gloves, three hats, and five pair of socks. I knew the dangers of the cold and I was going to do everything in my power to keep warm.
At the first stop just up the road from our house, I noticed that my mom had not accounted for sideways snow and that our red wagon was now completely full of snow. My brothers and I brushed off the snow as well as we could, but in the process Andy knocked the wagon over.
“Nice shot,” I sarcastically remarked, “come on guys let’s pick everything up”
“Hey knock it off!” I heard Dallin yell at Alex as he shoved his mouth full of Mom’s candies.
Dallin proceeded to pelt Alex with frozen pieces of fudge. “Eat this, and this,” he kept yelling at Alex.
“Dallin!” I yelled. The yell did the trick and Dallin dropped the rest of his ammunition.
Alex, now looking quite ridiculous with half his face covered in frozen fudge, and the other half covered in welt marks, picked up the fallen candy shoved in his pockets then took hold of the wagon and started pulling it up the driveway to our neighbor’s house. I rang the doorbell and a fat, old man opened the door. Andy shoved the plate of candy at the man.
“Candy,” Andy stated looking just like a Neanderthal.
“Ouch, careful boy,” the man replied as Andy, because of his stunted growth, had pushed the plate right into the man’s knee.
“Sorry sir, he’s in a hurry,” I apologized for my brother who had run off to the wagon in an attempt to hurry to the next house. He looked more like a gingerbread man running away than a boy with his tight winter clothing hugging his legs and arms so tight that he could not bend his knees and elbows. I turned to leave the doorstep and stepped on some ice, down I went hitting every limb on my body and the back of my head on the hard cement.
“Here have some candy, that will make you feel better,” said the senile man as he threw a piece of frozen fudge and my head before he slammed the door to keep the blowing snow out of his house.
“Hush up!” I yelled at my unsympathetic brothers who were laughing uncontrollably at my unfortunate blunder. I limped back to the wagon and we continued our trip. A couple of minutes later Alex lost the grip on the wagon, I saw it coming, but my body did not move the way that it used to before my horrible and tragic fall. I dove out of the way, but misjudged the distance. My quick thinking to act as a human speed bump, did however slow the wagon enough so that my brothers were able to stop the wagon before it got all the way down the hill.
“Good thinking,” Andy sincerely complimented.
“Yeah, nice moves ballerina boy,” Dallin couldn’t help himself. With all of his defaults, including his personal hygiene challenges, Dallin was always jealous that I was so much closer to perfection than he was and he had to get in his jabs every chance that he could get. I ended up slipping about ten more times during our long journey as I learned that slippery ice and injured knees and ankles do not mix.
“You boys are so cute,” Mrs. Riley kindly said at our last stop. “What’s wrong with your brother?”
“He’s had a few falls today,” Andy answered looking at my back, since it was the only thing visible after a face plant into the snow in Mrs. Riley’s front yard. Alex and Dallin both grabbed a foot and pulled me onto the street where oncoming traffic had a free shot at my crippled body.
“Let’s get home boys,” Dallin said to the rest of us.
Even though our house was only a few feet away, it took me about 30 minutes longer to get there than my brothers. By the time I got home my brothers had eaten all of the left over candy and blamed it on me. I didn’t mind the month of being grounded since it gave me the opportunity to rest from my injuries.
Another year of deliveries was over and I had suffered greatly. My dad like always just wanted to make sure that his wagon was taken care of and told me that the falls would make me a man. Mom was asleep and sick in her chair for the next two days because of all of the hard work of making Christmas candy (or eating too much of it), so she never did offer me the sympathy that I deserved for my amazing sacrifice.

The First Day of Sixth Grade

There are several reasons why I remember the first day of sixth grade. It all started in the morning when we were getting ready for the all important first day of school. Andy was starting 9th grade and he believed himself to be the hottest thing since indoor plumbing. He ended up spending way too much time on the little curl on his hair that made him look like Lucille Ball to everyone else. Then he used makeup to cover up some of the bigger white heads on his face which had been hit with a plague straight out of the Bible. His head may have looked funny, but his pants put all other funny looking things to shame. They were made of shinny polyester and they hugged his legs so tight that Michael Jackson would have turned his head in shame. Andy was at the peak of puberty and to this day I have not had the pleasure of having a normal conversation with my older brother as it has been his misfortune to continue puberty well into his 30’s.
I arrived at school and heard an announcement that I knew would change my life forever. This year the school would have a student body president and a student council. I was going to be the president. I always knew that I was destined for glory, and this was my chance to prove it. Everything that had happened from the moment of my birth had prepared me to be the student body president of my elementary school.
“Did you hear that?” I asked my friend John who sat next to me. “I am going to be the president.”
“That’s awesome man.”
“I knew it,” I thought to myself, “everyone is expecting me to be their leader.”
The rest of the morning I sat in my seat smiling uncontrollably and planning my campaign strategy in my head. I was focused and nothing could distract me. Throughout the school day I was on cloud nine and I had fun doing everything. I sat at a table of boys and just before lunch we were hungry and getting a little rowdy. While I was laughing at a blond joke I let things get out of hand and before I knew it the pressure got to me and I made an unexpected loud noise. There was no denying this embarrassment so I just joined in with everyone else and laughed even louder.
“What’s going on!” Mrs. Jones demanded.
The kids all pointed to me.
“Bryan I want you back here for recess, you can sit with your head down and think about how you are not going to interrupt our class for the rest of the day.”
This wasn’t the best way to get on good terms with my new teacher, but I didn’t care I was going to be student body president, nothing could phase me at this point in my illustrious career, I am sure my teacher thought that I was on something as I sat there and just smiled like I didn’t have a care in the world.
After lunch one of my friends pulled out some seeds from some kind of pepper.
“Look at this guys,” John said showing us his treasure. He then proceeded to pass out seeds to our entire table.
“Look at me I’m a monster,” I said putting a seed on each of my eyes.
Other boys put the seeds in their noses, tongues and ears. We had a great time for about two minutes. My eyes started to itch and then burn as if someone had lit a fire inside of my head. I looked at my friends and they all had red faces and hands.
Mrs. Jones came over to see what the moaning was coming from our table. When she arrived I can only imagine the pitiful sight she enjoyed. Six boys with swollen red faces and hands moaning and a couple of us were rolling on the floor. She sent us to the bathroom to rinse off, but the pain remained for the rest of the day. I kept reminding myself of my future fame and that helped to ease the pain throughout the day and I sat with my careless smile once again.
The bell sounded and I rushed to the bike rack to find my two younger brothers.
“Alex guess what,” I said to my kindergarten brother.
“What?”
“I am going to be the president!”
“Wow, will you get to move to the White House and eat candy?” Alex was obsessed with candy.
“No bud, but I will be your boss.”
Just then Dallin came running around the corner with his friend Josh.
“Dallin guess what.”
Dallin turned toward me, made a monkey face while his friend flapped his wings like a bird. They both just ran past me and jumped on their bikes.
“I’m telling Mom if you don’t wait up,” I yelled without effect. “Come on Alex, let’s catch him.”
We didn’t catch sight of Dallin until we were almost to our first day of school ice cream party at the church.
“What’s that? Alex asked pointing at something in the road up ahead.
“It’s probably just a dead bird,” I replied.
“But it’s huge,”
“Maybe it’s a dead bear,”
I could tell this scared Alex as his eyes grew about 10 sizes which looked really funny on a little kid with and oversized head and eyes that already looked like they were going to pop out at any moment.
As we approached the dead bear, I could tell that it was actually a couple of kids lying in the road. Alex and I came up to two kids lying on their backs, staring at the sky and crying hysterically.
“Hey Dallin guess what? Sidewalk chalk tastes great. I accidently licked some in class and before I knew it half of my piece was gone.”
“Alex knock it off! Can’t you see that he’s hurt, look at his face it doesn’t have any skin on it.” I gently reprimanded Alex for going off on another tangent.
After trying to get the boys out of the middle of the road I gave up and decided to make a safe barrier around them so they would not get run over by a car. Alex and I broke the reflectors off our bikes and laid them in a circle around the accident. We had plenty of reflectors because my dad always made sure that each bike had at least ten reflectors to make sure we were safe and riding in style at the same time. After we had the accident site secured I turned to Alex.
“Alex you stay here and make sure Dallin doesn’t get run over, I’m going to get Mom.
I rushed home and ran through the door. After I had told my mom the whole story about me being the future president of our school I proceeded to tell on Dallin for running away from me after school. Eventually I got to the fact that my brother was lying in the middle of the street bleeding to death and we ran out the door to save his life.
When we arrived on the seen it looked the same as I had left in, two boys screaming in the middle of the road surrounded by bike reflectors. Alex had wondered off to the gutter and was eating bugs.
“Alex get over here!” Mom yelled.
Alex dropped his next bug and ran over to my mom. “Mom, Mom! Guess what. I ate sidewalk chalk!”
My mom starred at him in horror for a brief second and then focused on the two boys. She picked them up and put them in the back of the car as I gathered the reflectors and Alex chased a butterfly.
“Let’s go,” Mom demanded.
“But what about my ice cream at the church,” I whined.
“Not now Bryan, not now.”
“But…” I stopped as my mom gave me the “I will rip your guts out if you say one more word” look.
We rushed the boys over to the hospital where we all three fought for my mom’s attention. I was trying to tell her about how popular I was and how there was no way that anybody would vote for anybody else, Alex was bragging about his snacks throughout the day, and Dallin was still screaming like a little girl who had just lost her doll.
I never did win the election; the rumor was that the whole election was fixed. I still hang my posters in my living room, knowing that one day my old principal will walk through my door, apologize and beg me to attend our sixth grade reunion as president of my class. Dallin ended up with a permanently scared face which looks like he has had a run in with a blow torch that melted his face off. Alex continues to have GI problems due to his interesting choice in foods. Andy still lives in 9th grade and walks with a noticeable strut. Despite our shortcomings we are still the best of friends and even though we may not be accepted by our neighbors, we respect each other and enjoy getting together to watch Alex eat weird things, and balance couches on his face while Andy shows us his latest basketball hero’s name that he has shaved into the rug of hair on his back.

Playing Baseball

Baseball was usually my sport of choice and from the time that I was three I spent my summers swinging a bat. Andy and I would often have debates on who could hit the ball the farthest; Dad or Mickey Mantle. We usually decided that Dad would probably out slug the famous Yankee Hall of Famer. Dad would take us down to Stoker school to hit us baseballs. The field was only a little larger than a regulation soccer field, so he did not have enough space to hit the balls far, but he did hit them high. In fact, my dad would hit the ball so high that I would always lose sight of it for a few seconds at its peak. One time he got too much ball and the ball soared over buildings and into Main Street, I heard some noises but he told me that it was a bad ball anyway and not to go and look for it. We got pretty good at spotting the balls coming out of the clouds and then catching them. I also learned how to pad my mitt to avoid broken fingers. Before I got good I would also wear a football helmet, shoulder pads and shin guards. All suited up I had no fear, except for when the oversized football helmet spun around and would leave me in the dark for a few scary moments. Once we caught the ball we would throw it toward Dad where Dallin or Alex would act like gophers, shag the balls and hand them back to Dad. I knew that I was well on my way to becoming a professional baseball player, I even had my own baseball card and championship trophy made in preparation for future events.
My dad of course could not always come with us. Most of the time, in fact all summer long, Andy and I and later our other two brothers would head down to Stoker on our own and spend the day playing our own made up versions of a baseball games that could be played with only a couple of people. We would load up the baskets on our bikes with bats, balls, bases, and all sorts of mitts and head down to our home field. One of my favorite games was when I would pretend to be a major league pitcher. My skills were up for the challenge but unfortunately I was too young to actually pitch for a major league club so I settled to pitch 9 full innings to imaginary batters with my older brother catching. Usually I would end up pitching a perfect game striking out all pretend batters who came to the plate. Yes, a few of the batters saved my records of no walks by conveniently calling time outs just before I threw many of the my wild pitches, but in the end I always threw a perfect game without making a single mistake. I was good, and I knew it.
After a year or so of playing all day everyday during the warm summer months Dad decided that the public park needed an upgrade. We spent the next few weeks pulling ivy off the left field fence that acted as a barrier for the people who lived in the apartments next door and relocating loads of sand from the nice city park to make a nice infield for our field. Our project was starting to look much more like a baseball field than a weed patch. I worked hard during those weeks to make that field usable and through our efforts we claimed the public field as our own. I was not very happy those times when some intruder had the audacity to trespass on our field.
One day Andy and I were pretending to have a playoff game. He was always the hitter and he would go through the team’s line up drop hitting me fly balls. I purposely would drop a lot of the balls that were hit by my favorite players, and with my skills I also made some pretty miraculous catches to save the day for our team. In all reality I was my own hero and in some ways I made more miraculous plays than the real player ever did.
“Who’s up?” I yelled to Andy.
“Wade Boggs,” he yelled back.
Wade Boggs was a good player, but he played for the Red Sox and we were not Red Sox fans. Wade hit a fly ball right for me, “Easy out, easy out,” I could hear the crowd cheering in my mind. I knew that all eyes and hopes of the crowd were on me, the self-appointed defensive hero of every game played in Yankee Stadium. I put up my glove and just missed it. The ball ricocheted off my glove and hit me right in the chin. I was hurt, but I was also brave.
I heard Andy yelling, “you can still throw him out!”
I gathered all of my strength, picked up the ball and threw it with all my might toward 1st base (the ball actually went the opposite direction into the road).
“OUT!” Andy screamed.
I was the only right fielder in history to have an arm strong enough to throw out a would be single. With my job done, I collapsed to the ground in obvious pain.
“It was the sun,” I kept whining over and over, “the sun made me drop it.”
“But it’s cloudy out here Bryan there is no sun,” Andy had run out to the outfield to see if I was okay.
“Yea, but it came out just long enough to make me miss that ball.” I said as I stood up ready to go again even though I had to play the rest of the game with the baseball’s thread marks imbedded on my chin.
“Next up, Don Mattingly,” Andy excitedly yelled out.
The bases were loaded and the Yankees were down by three runs. A grand slam here could mean a win for the Yankees. There was a full count, somehow Andy had managed to miss the ball twice and had thrown himself three balls. He hit the next toss and I was about to catch it, but decided to drop it on purpose just outside of the foul line.
“Foul ball!” I yelled.
After three more foul balls and a line drive that did not count because of a rowdy, imaginary fan, Don, finally hit a deep ball (it helped that Andy had scooted up to third base to hit the ball) that went flying over the fence. I ran around the fence to get the ball when I heard the distinct sound of glass breaking. I ran back around the fence even faster. In church teachers frequently give the example of some kid breaking a window with a ball. The honest child always goes, knocks on the door and offers to pay for the broken window. Obviously those teachers have never broken a window before. During the lessons I always gave the right answer, but the sound of broken glass triggered a signal in my brain that said, “RUN!”
I have never moved so fast in my life, Andy and I jumped on our bikes and took off down the street, we jumped off at a nearby church and hid behind a big tree.
“That was an awesome hit,” Andy complimented himself.
“Who cares, we are dead. How are we ever going to pay for a window, not to mention get our ball back?” I hopelessly asked.
We debated for a few minutes and then decided that after a whole 10 minutes, the coast was sure to be clear. That was a nice ball that we had lost, and we had to get it back. Behind the park where we played there was a big apartment complex. We looked through the bushes next to the window where the ball had gone and all we could see was a hole in the window.
“Andy look,” I said pointing at the window.
“Wow, a hole,” Andy replied with his mouth gaping open. “Do you think a rock broke it?
“What’s wrong with you Andy? You broke it!”
Just then I heard a voice behind us say, “Looking for this boys?”
I turned to see a huge man just taller than me in a tight white tank top, glasses, unibrow and a patchy beard that was obviously his pride and joy. He held a burned grilled cheese sandwich and a can of Fresca in one hand and in the other was our ball. He held his prize new ball, taunting us and obviously not planning on giving it back. The kind man, showing off his huge vocabulary of four letter words, then explained to us in a long compound sentence, how we would pay for his window.
We were doomed and we knew it. There was no way that we could tell my dad, he would not be happy. We went straight to Mom and told her what had happened. My mom made us return to the man’s house to apologize and pay him off. When he answered the door the man was not as loud as he had been before, it probably had to do with the fact that my mom’s five foot two figure dwarfed his own five foot frame. My mom made arrangements to pay the man once the window came in and then Andy and I agreed to do the dishes for the rest of our mortal lives.
We ended up breaking another couple of windows over the course our careers, but nothing could ever stop us from playing baseball together. My legacy still lives on at that field, out of respect for my brothers and I the city tore out the baseball diamond a few years back and the field has been retired in our honor.

Parades, Rooftops, and Dead Birds

For many years my dad had decorated our bikes, dressed us up as clowns and entered us in the town parade. We were never official, Dad would just show up and we would sneak in line behind the fire trucks. Although we were not official, we were favorites, one year the newspaper even did a story on us. If people in our town don’t know us by our tree house, they do remember us from the parades. Mom spoiled all of the fun saying it was too dangerous just because baby Dallin was hit in the face with a water balloon one year as he rode in a trailer that my dad was pulling. This year we would have to be like the rest of the crowd and just watch the parade. The only problem with this scenario was that we were not like the rest of the crowd, we were a peculiar family and we always stuck out. My dad could see no point in saving places the night before that was a waste of time, besides we were busy at that time collecting discarded chairs and blankets that people had left on the side of the road.
My dad had a plan, I could see it in his face, and it made me nervous. I didn’t like sticking out, and I hated doing things that could get me into trouble, Dad was the opposite. He was always dragging us into situations that could get us yelled at or driven off in a police car. For instance, he frequently made us get up on the roofs of the local schools so that we could get all of the balls and other things that the students had thrown up there.
The time of the parade arrived and we jumped on our bikes to ride down to Main Street. Before getting on his bike, my dad casually threw a 12 foot ladder on his back. I looked over at Andy and mouthed the words, “A ladder?”
Andy shrugged his shoulders indicating that he hadn’t the foggiest idea what we were about to do.
I looked over again at the interesting sight of my dad on his bike with a ladder on his back and my little sister sitting on an extra seat that he had welded to the frame just in front of his own seat.
As we approached Main Street it was obvious that there were way to many cars for us to make it to Dad’s secret spot without being noticed. While maneuvering through the cars my dad’s ladder caught the side of a car and left a long gash in the shiny red paint. My dad glanced back, but kept riding. Now I really began to panic, I didn’t want to get into trouble for scratching somebody’s car so I hurried as fast as I could across the street, it was a mistake and I knew it as soon as I began the dangerous crossing. A car was coming fast and I saw it, but I needed to stay with my dad so I wouldn’t be blamed for scratching the car. I turned my pedals as fast as my legs would move, but I wasn’t fast enough and the car clipped my back tire. The force threw me most of the rest of the way across the street and I landed softly on the grass; a grand total of a two foot flight.
“Ouch!” I screamed more out of fear than pain.
My brothers and a couple of strangers ran over to me to assess the damage. Dad ran over to the bike, picked it up and immediately began to check all of the different parts to make sure that the precious bike had not been damaged.
“Are you okay?” Andy asked.
“My knee, my knee,” I cried figuring that since that is where I landed, that must be where my injury was.
“Well, it looks like you have some grass stains, and both of your knees are red,” Andy replied trying to sound sympathetic.
“I think my injuries are internal!” I was hopelessly reaching out for any kind of opportunity to get out of this scary situation with the ladder and go home to my mom.
“Shake it off, and let’s get going,” I heard the familiar voice of my father command.
I stood up and walked over to mount my bike with an exaggerated, pitifully looking limp that made me look more like a penguin than a little boy. We ended up riding our bikes to the back of Bountiful Drug. I was still confused, especially since we could not see the parade from where we were standing. My dad got out the ladder and set it against the back of the building.
“Up you go,” he calmly stated staring right at Andy.
Up Andy went without even giving it a second thought. When he reached the top my dad started to climb the ladder. Once Dad reached Andy I saw my brother climb onto his shoulders and suddenly I realized what we were doing. We were going to watch the parade from the roof of Bountiful Drug! It would be a great view, but I could think of two problems; one, we wouldn’t get any candy, and two we would probably end up in jail. As scared as I was of going to jail, I was even more scared of my father, so when it was my turn I obediently climbed the ladder, my father’s shoulders and then the last few feet of the wall until I landed safely on the roof. Dallin was also able to climb up on his own, but Alex and Marne were too short. Luckily, Alex was a good climber so once Andy and I gave him our hands he was able to scurry up the wall with ease. The problem came with Marne. Marne was brave for a girl, but when it came to standing on top of Dad’s shoulders on top of a 12 foot ladder, she reverted back to her silly girl tendencies to freak out. As soon as we grabbed a hold of Marne’s arms she started screaming and kicking as if she were an inflated, untied balloon that had just been released.
“Calm down spas!” I screamed at Marne attempting to facilitate my grip on her flailing body.
“I’m FALLING!” Marne pierced the air with such fury that a nice family of birds in a nearby tree took flight for a safer refuge.
I finally was able to get my arms around her chest and pull her onto the roof. We both tumbled backwards and the gooey snot from her temper tantrum covered my arms and hands in a transparent, sticky film.
My dad came up right behind us and pulled the ladder up after him to cover our tracks, as if six people on top of a roof would not tip anyone off.
I have to admit that we had a great view of the parade. My siblings and I stood right next to the edge for the whole parade, Alex and Marne needed a boost to be able to see over the wall that surrounded the border of the roof.
“Look,” I said to Andy pointing to a dead bird on the ledge.
“Touch it,” I dared Andy. I should have learned my lesson by now, but whenever Andy and I found something new and interesting, I always dared him to touch it to make sure it was safe.
“No way, Dallin you touch it,” Andy said.
Just like always Dallin obeyed, reached out his finger and poked the dead bird. The bird immediately took flight, not by its own power but through the power of gravity. We all three stretched our necks over the ledge and watched the bird falling head over heals toward the ground. The soon to be smashed piece of poultry landed right in the lap of a man who was just about to take a bite out of his sandwich. The man jumped to his feet out of sure fright and knocked his drink onto the people sitting directly in front of him.
We dropped down out of sight, too scared to recognize the humor in the situation. After a couple of minutes we got up to watch the rest of the parade confident that it was now safe to resurface. Andy reached over and brushed the gravel off that had imbedded itself in the skin of my face.
My dad had done it again, he had given us another unique childhood memory that we would never forget. Somehow we got through the parade, got down and rode our bikes through a crowd of police without anyone ever questioning us. The next year we ended up watching the parade lying in hammocks in the Sycamores that provided shade to a section of Main Street.

The Worst Week Ever

(Remember that these are fictional stories based on real events. This blogg is a place for the author's drafts, proofreading will take place at a future date, the author is completely aware of the need for editing and revision)
There are not too many specific dates that I remember, but I will never be able to forget the most horrible week of my life. The week of Oct 3 1988 was when my sister Marne was born. Although Marne has made all of our lives a little more complicated, she was not my reason for despair during these specific days. The source of my regularly reoccurring nightmare for the past 20 years was my dad. When my mom found out that she was going to have a 5th child she immediately decided that she needed a little R&R. She also decided that the best way to take this R&R would be to have a C section instead of a traditional delivery so that she would have a few extra days in the hospital. Yes, my mom was desperate and this was, as she saw it, her only way out.
My dad was a nice guy, he just had some unique ideas that didn’t make sense to anybody else, this uniqueness made it difficult for me to live with Dad without having Mom as a buffer.
The first night started out okay until Alex had to go to the bathroom. Alex was four and supposedly recently potty trained, but apparently he still did not understand the entire concept of a toilet.
“Bryan!” Dad yelled, “come and get this thing off of your brother.”
“I came into the living room assuming that Alex had just stuck the mop bucket on his head again, but as soon as I rounded the corner, my recently healed nose told me that I had my work cut out for me. I did not want to get involved in cleaning Alex up, but I knew better than to defy my dad, there would be no forgiveness for such an act.
“Alex, come over here buddy,” I leeringly coaxed.
He could tell from the look in my eyes what I was up to and he ran for it. Andy and Dallin helped me chase him down and corner him in the back of the laundry room.
“Andy you hold his hands up in the air while Dallin holds his legs and I’ll get these dirty pants off,” I said in a less than motivated tone.
As soon as I had started Alex broke free of Dallin’s grip and kicked him in the head. Dallin went down hard and took the laundry soap with him. Struggling to get back on his feet, Dallin regained control of Alex’s flailing leg and we completed the dirty procedure. I threw the filthy pants in the washer and opened the bathroom door where my dad was waiting to squirt Alex down with a hose he had fashioned to the tub. After two minutes of Alex screaming and Dad yelling, Dad came out to scold us for the mess we had made in the laundry room.
“What’s for dinner Dad?” Dallin boldly asked at about 10 that night. We were starving and hoping that Dad had accomplished enough of his projects that he would be in a good mood and would be feeling generous enough to feed us. He ended up getting out some 50 year old Army Surplus instant dinners. They had great names like “Chicken Ala King,” but the brown and dark green packaging made them look just like they tasted, stale.
“This food will put hair on your chest, its not like the wimpy stuff Mom feeds you, plus its cheap,” Dad told us matter of factly.
As anyone can tell by looking at Andy’s chest, back and ears, he loved the stuff, he ate his share as well as everybody else’s. Once dinner was finished it was time to do the dishes for the day. Dad had us haul all of the dishes into the bathroom and load up the tub.
“Dad didn’t we just clean off Alex in here?” I timidly questioned.
“This is powerful cold water, if you can’t see it, it’s not dirty,” my dad answered.
The dishes were loaded and my dad spent about 30 seconds sprays all of the visible food off the plates, spoons, pans, and glasses. Next, we put all of the dishes on a couple of large bath towels and let the dry for a few minutes before we put them back in their places in the cupboards.
“Dad all of the towels will be wet for our baths,” Andy observed.
“Real men don’t need towels,” he replied. “You first Bryan.”
Obediently I jumped into the tub.
“I don’t make enough money to constantly use the hot water, so brace yourself,” my dad warned right before he turned on the straight cold water and squirted me off just like he had the dishes. “Go turn on the fan in the kitchen and stand in front of it, you’ll be dry in no time.
There was no such thing as privacy in our home and within a few seconds all four boys were standing in the kitchen in front of the fan drying off from their quick “showers.” My dad walked in with a sense of pride on his face, he had saved at least a few cents from making us suffer and he was proud of that accomplishment.
The next day we got to go to the hospital to visit our new baby sister. I knew she was part of the family, but there was something weird about her, I had never been so close to a girl before and I was a little scared.
“Andy I dare you to touch her,” I said.
“No way.”
“I will,” Dallin boldly stated as he walked over and poked Marne in the eye.
This sent the baby into a screaming furry as mom scrambled to pick up her new favorite child. She sent a scowl to all of us as she tried to calm the baby. Meanwhile Alex thought that Dallin’s actions were a permit to create total mayhem so he started climbing the curtain that divided Mom’s room in half. Without warning the curtain crashed to the floor covering Alex in a heap of mess. Just then the nurse walked in the door to see what all of the commotion was. I can’t even imagine what thoughts she must have had as she saw a screaming newborn, three young boys laughing hysterically, a toddler tangled in a mess of ceiling tiles, curtain rods and fabric, and a bald man with a latex glove pulled over his head. She took one look, started to say something, turned and left the room.
Mom ended up sending us all home, and we didn’t get to go back until mom was released from the hospital.
This is basically how it went for the few days that we lived with Dad, Army for dinner, cereal for all other meals, spraying off the dishes and the children, and helping him with his special projects. When mom finally got home, we were grateful for bedtime, bath time, and real food. This was the worst week of my childhood not only because we barely survived, but because of the severe repercussions, repercussions that are still in force today. When I go to visit my mom’s house I am not allowed to poke Marne in the eye, see mom’s large belly scar, or encourage Alex to swing from the curtains.

Sniffing

I suppose that some readers of my life’s story will suppose that I was always calm and in control. The truth is that I, like my brothers, had my own shinning moments. My dad used to take me up to the mountains to go rock hunting. He was addicted to rocks and he took every chance he could get to jump into his 52 Chevy, drive up into the mountains above our house and go rock hunting. At the time I was oblivious to the fact that my dad was loading five ton rocks by into the back of the truck, but as I look at the rock garden in his front yard now, my jaw drops in awe. While my dad was loading rocks my brothers and I spent our time searching for bullet shells. There were always plenty of bullet shells in the mountains because people would frequently get drunk and either shoot the mountain mistaking it for a giant animal, or use their beer cans for target practice.
“Time to go boys,” my dad shouted.
I grabbed my pile of shells and jumped on the tailgate where we all rode the three miles to our house. When we got home I immediately went to work sorting, washing and polishing my pieces of treasure. I compared my favorites with those of my brothers. We did a little trading back and forth and took our private loots back to our secret hiding places. I selected a bullet that I thought was one of my better ones and placed it in my pocket before I ran down to the kitchen to get some lunch. After we had all eaten our sandwiches we just sat there. It was summer and we were bored so we sat at our round kitchen table staring at each other. A few minutes later my dad happened to walk into this dismal scene. I knew that he hated it when we would just sit around wasting the day and if he saw us involved in such fruitless activity he always found something for us to do. Each of us immediately put a serious look on our faces as if we were in such deep mediation that we should not be bothered, but it was too late, our feeble attempts at deception had not come to fruition.
“You’re burning daylight in here kids, come on I need all of your help,” he stated with sure confidence. He walked out the door knowing that his slaves would be right behind him.
We looked at each other; each of us knowing that we had been stupid. If we wanted to sit around doing nothing like normal kids and not be stuck helping my dad with one of his crazy projects then the only thing for us to have done would have been to hide in our closets, something that I had done many times. My dad held the opinion that important things were only the ones on his to do list, everything else including homework, chores, helping mom, or emergency open heart surgery could wait for whatever extremely important project that just happened to occupy his next few days before he would set it aside with the other piles of his beloved, invaluable things that he he simply could not live without. In his view a little sawing, welding and shellacking could turn anything into a valuable object that could someday save the world.
Today was no exception and I ended up outside in his garage holding a bolt for three hours. He strategically placed all of us right where he thought he might need us. He made us stay for the duration of the project just in case he might need us at some future point. It was plain to all of us that this was a one-man project and our rights as free citizens were being trampled on.
“I’m making a break for it,” I whispered to Andy.
“You’re an idiot,” he kindly, but intelligently responded.
I started backing toward that door. I was almost free.
“Foot-Sack-It! Bryan don’t move you’re ruining the whole project!” Dad screamed at me as he continued grinding a small piece of medal sending sparks flying in every direction.
I was stuck and extremely bored. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the shiny bullet that I had placed there earlier. I took it out and decided that it looked like a rocket. My new rocket zoomed around Andy’s head and in and out of Dallin’s ear.
“Stop it Bryan,” whined Dallin.
“Knock it off!” Dad took a brief timeout from his busy schedule to scold me for entertaining myself.
A few seconds later the rocket decided to tickle the hairs on Alex’s neck. Alex swung and slapped himself thinking that the rocket was a mosquito. The loud slap sent the rest of us into a muffled giggle. One glance from my dad put us back in our places and we stood as still as soldiers on the brink of a terrible battle. My rocket surfaced again but this time its journey stayed closer to home base.
“Houston there is a malfunction in the back oxygen tank,” my mind had become lost in imagination.
“Captain bring it in for a landing abort, this mission is over,” replied a second voice within the darkness of my mind.
“Copy Houston.” The rocket zigzagged back and forth. Only an experienced pilot could bring this renegade to a landing. The rocket headed for the safety of the first dark, moist hole it could find.
Lost in another world I crash landed the bullet shell inside of my right nostril. In my rush to obey the commands of an imaginary command post I had wedged a small piece of metal inside of my head. I immediately discontinued all breathing activity from my nose and started breathing out of my mouth to avoid the shell from working its way into my brain. Safe for the moment I closed my eyes and began to panic. I was silent for the rest of my stay in my dad’s shop. I just stood there hoping that dad would finish quickly because I felt as if my head was on fire. Thoughts of my mother weeping hysterically at my funeral flashed through my mind.
I was at last released from my servitude for the night. I motioned Andy to come up to my room with me. I really did not want to admit my stupidity to anyone, but this was an emergency, my life hung in the balance.
“You did what?” Andy asked as if he didn’t believe me.
“You heard me, I got one of my bullets stuck in my nose,” I embarrassingly replied.
“How...”
“Don’t even ask. I need you to help me get it out.”
I pulled out a flashlight and handed it to Andy.
“I don’t see it, but there sure is a lot of dirt in here,” Andy mentioned as he was straddling my chest and staring up my nose.
“Grab the magnifying glass in the top drawer of the desk,” I replied with a slight accent created from Andy’s fingers working to shove the flashlight inside my nose.
“Wow, I never knew how cool the inside of a nose could be.”
“Yeah, yeah whatever, but do you see the bullet casing?”
“Yep, here it is. Oh, wait a second… nope, never mind it’s just a piece of corn. How did you get a piece of corn inside your nose?”
“I like to sniff things okay, just get it out and look in the other side. It’s in the right side, not the left,” I was losing my patience and wanted to get this thing pulled out, not to mention that it had become exceedingly difficult to breath with my brother sitting on my chest.
“Okay I see it now. Wow, it looks to be a perfect fit,” Andy grabbed the tweezers and started tugging.
I screamed. I was brave, but this hurt, and I was not used to having things extracted from my nose.
“What’s going on up there?” my mom yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
“Sorry mom, Bryan just smashed his nose,” Andy called back down. He then turned back to me to convey the bad news. “It’s no use. I think you’re going to have to tell mom and have Dad pull it out.
“No way!” I resolutely stated, “I’ll find a way out of this.”
We went down for dinner, but it did not last long. Every time Andy looked at me he started laughing. My mom sent us both away hungry, since she thought we were laughing at her cooking abilities. With the extra time in my room I decided to play with the bullet wedged in my nose. I could feel it, but it was such a perfect fit that I couldn’t get any leverage. I kept at it and soon my nose became so raw that it felt like it was on fire. Just then I had a brilliant idea. I grabbed a tube of Vaseline and shoved it up my nose as far as it would go. I emptied as much jelly as would fit around the bullet casing.
I began to flare and flex my nose rapidly. “Flare and flex, flare and flex,” I kept repeating inside of my head. With every flex I could feel the bullet loosening and even though chunks of red petroleum jelly fell from my face I continued to persevere. Before long I could feel the bullet sticking out of my nose. I grabbed the tweezers and ripped it out. I threw the bad memory into the garbage and at that moment decided to retire from collecting bullet shells. Yes, this experience may have left me with lasting scars on the inside of my right nostril, but this trial provided Andy and I with an increased respect for one another. To this day I still respect Andy for having the courage to stick his fingers up my nose and he respects me for having the courage to rip a sharp metal object out of my soft facial tissue.

Teaching Dallin to Fetch

One of the key moments of my childhood was the day that Andy and I realized that our younger brother Dallin was going to take extra time to develop the common sense portion of his brain. We came across this piece of intelligence by sheer happenstance. I had always thought that along with being born with defined muscles, Dallin was born with a natural tan, but I was about to learn an important secret.
I walked in the back door expecting to smell mom’s fresh bread, but as I entered the house my nose didn’t even have a chance to survey its surroundings as a piercing scream filled my ears with a horrible pain. I made my way toward the bathroom and the source of the blood curdling noise.
“You’re washing off my skin!” I heard Dallin screaming.
“Be still boy,” my mom was still calm, but on the verge of losing it. “This is not a tan, it is dirt. You need to learn how to wash yourself. I should have done this a long time ago.”
Apparently my mom was giving Dallin a bath. This was highly unusual, in fact I couldn’t remember the last time that my mom had bathed any of us. A few minutes later Dallin immerged from the bathroom crying and with a towel around his waist.
“Mom scrubbed my skin off,” he sadly mentioned to me on his way up the stairs to his room.”
He was white! I couldn’t believe it, all of this time I thought that Dallin had a tan and it was really nothing but dirt. This new information set in motion the thinking wheels in my mind. I was coming up with a brilliant plan and I had to find Andy so we could work out the details.
I found Andy outside in the tree house with a plastic gun in his pocket, a fake police badge pinned sideways on his shirt, cowboy boots, and his superman cape.
“Command, command pick up this is Agent Skelton,” He whispered into an imaginary microphone on his Mickey Mouse watch. “I have eliminated the threat here on planet Z and I am ready to be beamed back home.”
He looked a little disturbed so I didn’t want to interrupt his imagination just yet. He then began tapping his watch as if the pretend microphone could actually break. “Darn piece of junk,” he said to himself. The next thing I knew he was looking up, obviously at some dark, looming, imaginary figure.
“I, I don’t have it, ii-its gone,” he said to the thin air.
“Liar!” Andy screamed in a scratchy voice, pretending to be his own arch enemy.
My brother then made a loud bang sound and lay on the tree trunk pretending to be fatally injured. I had had enough and was ready to make an end to this embarrassing moment in my brother’s history.
“Alright Captain Kirk playtime is over. Climb on down here I want to talk to you about something,” I said in a condescending tone.
Once we were safe in the confines of our secluded room I made my proposal.
“So come to find out, Dallin is having trouble developing a sharp mind,” I began as I related to him the story of Dallin’s bath time.
Our diabolical plan was simple, we would get Dallin to run all of our errands for us. All we would have to do is use our watches as props and tell him that we were going to see how fast he could do certain projects. The key to the whole operation were the watches and the phrase “wow that was even faster than the last time.” We decided to give it a test run.
“Dallin let’s see how fast you can run in the house and get us some of Dad’s chocolate,” I slyly said.
“Won’t I get in trouble?
“Not if you go fast enough,” I replied. “Ready, set, go.”
He was off like a bullet and in no time he had returned with our prize.
“Wow that was even faster than the last time,” Andy shouted.
I elbowed Andy in the side. “This is the first time we’ve done this there is not last time. What’s wrong with you?” I whispered under my breath.
“Oh yeah,” he replied.
“Actually Dallin you did that in exactly 37 seconds,” I said correcting Andy’s almost fatal mistake. “Let’s see if you can do it again, only faster.”
Before I could even say go, he was off.
“Alright Andy this time when he comes back you can say your line.”
“That was even faster than the next time,” Andy shouted as Dallin returned with more chocolate.
“Last time, “I corrected.
“I mean last time”
“Wow, I am fast,” Dallin bragged.
“Yes, you are little brother, way faster than either of us that’s why this is such a fun game.” I deviously replied.
Our little game even expanded to include Alex once he was out of diapers, and for a while we had a blissful arrangement. Eventually Dallin started to develop the common sense that he had lacked and started using this game on Alex and Marne. Andy and I decided to stop before our parents caught on to our little game. Dallin however, is still getting away playing fetch with Alex. For example, a few months ago Dallin bought a new truck here in Salt Lake off of eBay. He told Alex he would time him to see how fast he could drive the truck to his house in South Dakota. That weekend Alex and his wife drove off to South Dakota, both believing that they were in some kind of secret race. Dallin even went above and beyond all expectations when he gave them a nice bowling trophy he had bought at a thrift shop. He simply scratched their names in with a paperclip. They have proudly placed the trophy Dallin gave them in their apartment next to their statue of Milli Vanilli. The cute couple is always confused when people ask them if they bowl.

7th Grade

I had finally graduated from grade school and I was headed on to junior high, and not any old junior high, but Bountiful Jr High. My mom had filled out a boundary variance so I did not have to attend Millcreek Jr. I had serious doubts that anyone of consequence could have been attending Millcreek. Bountiful on the other hand was the elite place to be and I had no idea why, it just was because my friends said so and as far as I was concerned my friends were the experts on everything.
The morning of the first day of junior high had arrived and I was extremely nervous, I was up about five times the night before rushing down the stairs in record fashion. Luckily I did not have any accidents. Two things were looming in my juvenile mind; (1) taking a shower after gym and (2) were my clothes cool enough for junior high? I woke up a little early so I could make sure to get my hair just right, and to get in an extra dose of Pepto-Bismol. My hair took about 30 minutes if I wanted it just right. First, I would comb my hair flat to my head with a perfect part. Next, I added a little poof to the bangs. Then, I used about a fourth of the can of hair spray to make sure my hair stayed in place all day. With a heavy head I went to eat a piece of bread for breakfast, I always got sick if I ate any real food for breakfast. With crumbs in my belly I went into the front room and lay down behind the La-Z-Boy where my mother slept. My mom kept the heater behind her “’bed” and I figured since I had to dry my hair I might as well sleep while I was doing it. It took approximately 20 minutes to turn my hair into hard plastic, and while my masterpiece was being formed I had a nice power nap. After the 20 minutes I went back into the bathroom to run a comb through my hair because who wants to look like they have fake hair? This final step made my hair look perfect and with all the hairspray there was little chance of it moving. If my hair did not turn out and I had the time, I would quickly run through the process a second time. This happened to be an okay hair day, not great just okay.
I walked to school, for the first part of 7th grade with John Lane and Brandon Smith, and the second part after John got annoying with only Brandon. I was glad to have a couple of friends with me as I walked in those ominous doors. I wasn’t sure what I would see on the other side, but as I walked in a feeling of pride came into my heart. I was proud because I was old enough to walk through the doors of a junior high at 8 in the morning and be in the right place. I now find it odd that I was ever arrogant because of my age, but when I was 12 I looked at 11 year olds as scumbags and 13 year olds as idols. Age was everything and you either had it or you didn’t.
I had been to the school earlier in the summer so I wouldn’t have a problem finding all of my classes. I noticed other students wearing similar clothes to the ones that I wore, I released a bubble of relief and quickly scurried to the other side of the hall so that the scent couldn’t be tracked to me. With my stomach ache gone I was ready for anything. Anything, that is, except for a shower in gym.
The three of us headed down the stairs towards the 7th grade hallway to see if we could spot any of our friends from sixth grade. I was halfway down the stairs when I spotted her. She was the most beautiful blond I had ever seen, and I became mesmerized.
“Dude, what’s wrong with Bryan?” John asked Brandon.
“Bryan snap out of it!” Brandon had tried, but he was too late, I was already falling. Stunned by this girl’s beauty my feet would not move, they were glued to the third step up from the hallway and my torso was still in motion. Everything switched to slow motion. I saw my friends laughing, I saw the beautiful blond girl laughing, and I saw the entire seventh grade class laughing. The papers and things that were in my hand went flying through the air and I heard them land around my head. I was injured, but not bad enough to not fake it and fortunately for my pride but not my pain level my head was the first to hit. Several girls became very concerned that I had hit my head, and I had my first real opportunity to share my awesome self with the ladies, even though the texture of the carpet had impeded itself on my forehead. Before I was able to capture the girls attention with my expansive vocabulary and magnetic personality a familiar voice jerked me back to reality.
“That was awesome,” Brandon remarked as I jumped to my feet.
“Are you okay?” a random girl asked.
“I’m great, I just slipped a little.”
“Whatever, dude you were staring at that hot girl over there,” John suggested pointing his finger to the object of my distraction.
I was turning red and fast. I quickly ducked my head and started limping at an angle toward my locker as fast as my new shoes would take me. Considering the fact that I could only see spots of light it was a miracle that I made it to my locker after only running into the wall a few times. As I looked back I was pleased to notice everybody still staring at me, I guess I had made an impressive impression with my stunning good looks. This defining moment in my history only grew more interesting a few days later when I found out that I was actually related to the girl I had briefly fallen in love with (she was the daughter of my mom’s cousin). I was glad that I had only mentioned my feelings to a few good friends.
Things did not get any better after the first period bell rang. I had Mrs. Peterson for seventh grade honors English. As I walked in the door I could tell that I was in trouble. She was obviously older than the school, which had been built sometime around the turn of the century. Her glasses hung on the end of her nose only clinging to her face by the pounds of makeup used to cover up her green skin. Her hair was in perfect form and had been the same shape for at least 20 years. She smelled of stale perfume and Alka-Seltzer and her teeth had turned a brownish-yellow from drinking a small lake of coffee over the course of the last century.
“Class, class take your seats, take your seats,” Mrs. Peterson commanded with a soft little voice and her eyes closed as if she had a headache already due to the vermin that had just entered her domain. “In my class there is no talking without raising your hand, am I understood?” She looked at us as if we were not even worth the scum she had collected on the bottom of her shoe from smashing cockroaches and spiders for one of her special potions.
She directed us to get out a book to read while she took the roll. The pipes in the heater starter acting funny and then let off some air, which seemed funny for the end of August. Maybe she was trying to cook us.
“Who is that breathing loud, I will not have students breathing loud in my class,” Mrs. Peterson warned.
I thought about answering “the heater Mrs. Peterson,” but I thought better of it at the last moment.
Mrs. Peterson either did not have a lesson prepared for us or she accidentally fell asleep because we ended up reading for most of the 45 minute period even though most of the students had not brought a book to their first class on the first day of seventh grade. As the period was about to come to a close she took the last 10 minutes to explain the homework.
“If you will look on page 3 of your grammar books you will see some sentences. You will copy each sentence five times. Every verb will be circled, nouns you will underline, adverbs will be circled twice, adjectives circle once with a line under it, conjunctions should be circled twice and underlined twice, the subject needs to be placed inside a rectangle and the predicate inside a double rectangle. We will add things as the weeks go on. Your homework is work a lot of points if you do not follow these directions perfectly you will miss a point for every word or phrase that you do not identify in the correct way,” she said this so calmly as if she considered herself normal and us the crazy ones. I was officially confused and I decided that if all of my classes were like this, I had already had enough of junior high academics.
The bell rang and all of the students started to get up to leave the classroom.
“The bell does not excuse you, I excuse you,” Mrs. Peterson said in a tone that was forceful enough to make all of those who had left seats return for further instruction. She just stared at us for thirty seconds and then released us. I took my time gathering my things because as I looked to the exit it seemed to get smaller and smaller with my English teacher looming to the side of the door evidently taking notes on every student as if she was looking for the perfect student to unleash her fury on. I thought about the window, but as I headed that direction I felt her piercing gaze upon me. I dropped to tie my shoe and then made a break for it. She grabbed my arm with her cold fingers just before my escape. “Slow down sonny, that kind of speed is going to get you detention.”
“Yes sss-ir,” I managed to squeak. It took me a few seconds to realize why the boys behind me were laughing.
It was a relief to walk free again through the hallways, and I knew one thing for sure, I was not going back to that room ever. I headed down the seventh grade hall toward the Armory and my dreaded gym class. As I turned to walk down the eighth grade hallway I was greeted with a knee that inflicted an extreme sharp pain. I fell to my knees and looked up to see my good friend David Stapley laughing down at me.
“Welcome to Bountiful Jr,” he calmly stated as he continued on his journey to his next class.
I realized that people were staring, but I was paralyzed. I knelt there in the middle of the hallway.
“Hey isn’t that the kid that was lying on the floor last period?” I heard a voice asked another.
“Yeah, poor kid. I think he is one of those special students who only comes for a couple of periods.”
I lay there for about two minutes listening to the whispers of students before I could muster the strength to continue down the hall to gym class. Once I got outside I had to jog to make it to the Armory in time. I slid into a spot on the gym floor just as the bell rang. When I looked around I could tell by the fear in the eyes of all the students that everyone had the same fear as I did. We were in this together, and it wasn’t going to be that bad. I raised my eyes and received a total shock. In front of my stood a six foot, overweight man in the shortest, tightest, most polyester shorts I had ever seen. We ended up getting a long lecture from this large man in tight shorts, so I didn’t even have to enter the dreaded showers that would wait for another day.
As I left the front doors of my new school that first day I realized that my biggest fears were not even going to be small problems compared to the horrible impression I had left on the entire student body. I had survived my first day of junior high, but unless I came back the next day as the wittiest, most gorgeous, and most intelligent seventh grader in the history of Bountiful Jr., I was in trouble. Luckily, as the future would reveal, my talents and charm were up to the challenge.

Bikes

Throughout my adventure filled life I have to admit that I have been prone to jealousy. I was jealous of my brother Dallin because he was born with a nice cut body. He had defined calves and biceps from the time that his poop still looked and smelled like mustard. I on the other hand have always been on the skinny side, despite my efforts to beef up my stature with hundreds of Richard Simmons video tapes. I was jealous of Alex because he knew how to spell; this talent had stemmed from a unique opportunity of having received an exclusive invitation to spend an extra year in 3rd grade. As a kid I couldn’t even spell single syllable words, as an adult, and what is more a teacher, I began teaching myself the rules of orthography. I was jealous of my only sister Marne because she always got whatever she wanted. The thing that I was the most jealous over however was Andy’s mountain bike. When I was about ten years old my dad bought Andy a $500 mountain bike and told me that I did not ride my bike enough to get one, but when I did, I too would receive a bike.
The day Andy came home with his black Fuji XC I jumped on good old Wild Fire and decided to prove my father wrong. I rode and rode that bike until I had given it everything I had. About 20 minutes later I pulled into our driveway all worn out. To my dismay my mom greeted me as if I had been there the whole time.
“Hi honey,” was all that she said.
Did she not notice the gallons of sweat pouring off my face? Or did she just think that I had hyperactive sweat glands? What use was it to throw a temper tantrum if I didn’t get any attention from it?
My drama never did pay out any dividends, but I did eventually get my bike a little while later, about the same time as my other two younger brothers.
It was four in the morning when my dad came up to our room to wake us up.
“Come on let’s go boys, daylight is burning,” Dad cheerfully hollered through our door as if it were lunchtime.
A couple of moans came back as a reply, but we knew not to mess with Dad so despite our weariness we were up and dressed in just a couple of minutes.
Downstairs mom was ready to greet us with a nice homemade breakfast of off brand cereal. I don’t know if you have ever tried to eat when your entire system is still asleep, but for some strange reason it just doesn’t work.
“Bryan you have got to eat if you are going to have enough energy for the whole bike ride,” my mom said as if she knew what she was talking about. I wasn’t even sure that my mom knew how to ride a bike, except for a vague, scary memory of my mom riding a bike to an exercise class in huge, fat socks and a leotard.
“Okay Mom,” I obediently replied as I shoved down the stale cereal into an ungrateful digestive system.
Outside it was eerily chilly as if the night were laughing at us for leaving so early and ignoring the dangerous of the darkness. My dad always said he wanted to beat the heat and by leaving at four in the morning for a 50 mile bike ride we should be home around one or two in the afternoon. Even though I always felt like puking this early in the morning, there was something special about the earth while it was sleeping, everything seemed so crisp and the possibilities of a future day seemed endless.
Those ignorant feelings of possibilities left rather quickly and just a few minutes into the big ride I was falling behind and using all of my energy to stay within spitting distance of my brother’s tire. My dad always just went a little too fast for me to keep up. Now that I am an adult I love cycling, but in all honesty I couldn’t stand it as a kid and the only reason I went was to be with my family, and to avoid being teased about being a wimp. I always found it hard to understand why anybody would enjoy doing what I was doing. I was trying desperately to keep up with my father knowing that at any turn I could be lost and never find my way home. Most of the trip to my Uncle Doug’s my head was filled with complaints and my muscles ached. I dreamed that every car going by would take sympathy on me and offer me a lift. At least I wasn’t as bad off as Alex or Dallin. Alex had to be pulled the whole way (an act that was terribly hurtful to his self-image, to this day when we go on bike rides Alex asks one of us to bring a rope just in case) and Dallin was at least half a mile behind us the entire trip due to the fact that he could not reach the pedals. Both of them were too short for their bikes so my dad had taken off their seats and replaced them with some gray foam padding that he had duct taped to the frame of their bikes. They looked rather ridiculous and once the sun made an appearance people came out of their houses to see our most amazing caravan. I always felt sorry for my little brothers because a thin foam pad was never enough to prevent horrible blisters.
Now that it was light and traffic had gotten a little thicker we were as vulnerable as ducklings crossing the street. In my mind the wind was always against us and most of the time kept us at a two mile an hour pace. Diesels would zoom past us and my dad always thought it an intelligent idea to use them to draft, which is why he always insisted on taking the roads with the most truck traffic. I will say that when drafting happened to work those huge trucks would give us a break from the wind, not to mention a tremendous push, but to me the scariness of the whole ordeal was not worth the brief increase in speed.
We had come to a four way stop and after waiting his turn, my dad proceeded through the intersection. A car coming from the north decided that traffic rules did not apply to bicycles and proceeded at the same time as our caravan.
“Footsacker!” my father screamed at the driver while simultaneously swerving toward the car on purpose. He swung his foot and kicked the door of the car with his powerful foot. One thing about my dad that did not need to be communicated even to strangers was that you don’t mess with him. He could be nice if he chose to be, but he could also rip the arms off of an 800 pound gorilla. I am sure he left a dent in the door and the driver in surprise, but I was so petrified that I had my head down and was speeding through intersection as if it were the end of the world.
“Please let me live, please let me live!” I repeated over and over in my head. I heard Alex let out a girly squeal and I noticed that Andy was so busy singing Mary had a Little Lamb that he did not even notice what was going on. Dallin, still a half mile behind came barreling through the intersection without even looking up as several other cars came to a screeching stop.
The rest of the trip went without incident, just yellow stripe after yellow stripe, and mile after mile of boring landscape. Despite the pain in every muscle in my entire body, the worst part of this endless death march was my boredom. I could never focus my mind and it was always spinning, looking, searching for something exciting among the fresh road kill. If I would have discovered music by that age a simple walkman might have eased my woes, but as it was I spent hours staring at the back tire of my brother Andy.
As we approached home I was at last glad that I had decided to go on the ride. I could spend the rest of the day lying around and whining with good reason. After sitting on a bike for six hours all by myself, without having a conversation outside the confines of my own mind, sympathetic attention from my mom was a great reward. I had made it home safe from another frightening family outing, and I didn’t have to worry about another adventure for at least another week.

The Treehouse

When you read the word treehouse you will automatically picture a small strucure about 10 feet off the ground built out of wood with a couple of walls and a roof. A more imaginative mind might also picture a rope, trap door, and some windows. Wrong. To me, this is not a treehouse. The image that I have just described I would call a small structure about 10 feet off the ground built in a tree. A treehouse is at least 50 feet tall and some 20 feet wide. Yes, there is some wood, but it is mostly built out of metal. A treehouse has hundreds of firepoles, and ropes, a few giant tennis net hammocks, a tent, several benches, a pulley system, electricity, lounge chairs, airplane controllers, flags, street signs, and a basketball court. It is not that I was blessed with an imaginative mind, this description was for my family a reality. For 15 years, this treehouse was my dad’s every spare second, his childhood dream made a reality by a black walnut tree, and we were his little elves that assisted him every perilous step of the way.

I had just made myself a very pleasing snack and ready to plunge my big white (I had exceptional teeth) into a peanut butter and Clover Club chip sandwich when my dad came in through the back door.

“I need your help; we are going down to Stoker (an old elementary school that had been recently sold to the University of Utah) to get something.”

I put down my sandwich reluctantly and headed for the door. I knew that for the next few hours I would be involved in another one of my father’s interesting, and possibly life threatening projects. When we got down to Stoker I could see what my dad wanted. The treasure he sought entailed three huge metal screens that had recently been taken off the basement windows of the school. These pieces of metal were about 12 feet long and 6 feet wide and weighed just about as much as a 12x6 piece of metal should weigh. Each of us grabbed a corner and we paraded, like some sort of freakish circus act, back to our house with this huge monstrosity between us. We had become very agile bike riders having had retrieved several such objects over the years. I was beginning to see myself as some sort of modern day pirate, only instead of gold and silver our treasure was everybody else’s’ junk, stuff that could have no possible use for anyone but my father. My dad could turn an old pig trough into a fashionable wading pool, or an old disgusting garbage can into a water heater, in fact he had invented both of these items as well as several other inventions of questionable legality.

After making the third trip I was extremely tired, but little did I know that the fun had just begun.

“Alright boys. Now that we have these here we are going to tie a rope to two of the corners and pull it up there.” He pointed to a spot in the tree about 20 feet off the ground. “Andy, you come up in the tree with me. Bryan and Dallin you stay down on the ground and guide it up to us, once it has left the ground run up and join us in the tree.”

“That’s imposs-ible!” Dallin whined, sounding just like Mark Hamil.

Just then Heath, a neighbor who was about Andy’s age saw the commotion and came over to
help. It was a good thing too because Dallin and I would have been squashed like bugs if he would not have shown up.

Everything went smoothly lifting the beast up to the huge branch where it would eternally rest, the problem came trying to get this new platform up and over that branch. As I ran up the tree I could see Andy starting to teeter. I jumped branch to branch agile as a cat in an attempt to save my brother from a scary death. Just before I got to my brother my foot slipped. Luckily my shin took one for the team and broke my fall, leaving me a permanent reminder of this blissful experience.

Now that Andy had gained his balance I turned to look at my dad. He was standing on a 12 inch wide branch with one foot while he had both hands on the metal platform pulling it over the branch.

“Wow,” I thought, “he could be a female gymnast with that balance.”

Working together as a team we finally got the platform into place, but if I had any thoughts of devouring my delectable, custom made sandwich, they were quickly dashed. I ended up holding up support beams and side railings for more than four hours. About two hours into our covert operation my arms felt like they had been run over by a bus as a side effect from holding them above my head until all of the blood had run into my feet. My dad was welding a couple of feet above me and I had my head down, away from the scary bright light of the fire, not to mention the dangerous sparks flying everywhere. All of the sudden I felt a warm sensation a on the back of my head. I remained reasonably calm for about a half of a second until I saw a huge chunk of my hair zoom past my face.

“What the,” is all I had time to say before I realized what had happened and I started screaming like a mad cow, “Help, help, help, I’ve been hit HELP!”

My dad and brothers watched me run around like a chicken with its head cut off for about 30 seconds before I stopped, realizing that I had no pain due to the fact that my nerve endings had been melted off by liquid metal. For the next couple of weeks my head sported a fashionable bald spot that made me look like I had recently received a lobotomy.

And so went the construction of the ominous treehouse that looked more like giant scaffolding. Piece by piece, hour by hour, day by day for 15 years. For 15 years I spent at least part of every Saturday in that black walnut tree usually suspended in some strange position dangling 30 feet above a concrete driveway. It was all for a good cause however, and I will never forget the endless hours I spent with my family literally clinging for my life while building the world’s biggest and most interesting treehouse. One day future generations will thank me for my sacrifice.

Camping

It was Wednesday morning I had been waiting for weeks for this day to arrive. My dad was coming home early from work and we were headed off to Payson Lakes for a few days of leisurely family vacation. My grandparents were the camp rangers so we always got the best spot. My mom was not coming this year because she was “pregnant.” Actually as I remember it she only came to one of our camping trips and that was because she felt guilty that her three year old daughter was brave enough to sleep without a night light, but she still had reservations. If there was something more exciting than camping to a 11 year old kid, I wasn’t aware of it. This was the one time all year when my dad would get out his baby, a 1974 black and silver Chevy, we could play in the dirt, and mom didn’t harp on us about cleaning our rooms. Dad had pulled out his truck the day before so we could get all packed. That truck was a thing of beauty and nobody got to touch it but my dad. My mom used to drive it until she backed down our brick wall with it, I always thought it was kind of funny, but it was not the type of memory that was okay to talk about.
After breakfast I went upstairs with Andy to pack our things. “Hey Ernie (he had ears that were too big for his head), don’t forget to pack enough undies, remember what happened last time,” I jokingly reminded Andy.
“Oh, be quiet it wasn’t my fault. I thought that squirrel was a bear, it was huge!”
“Whatever Bambi, just be more careful if you are going to sleep on the bottom of the trailer with me.”
My dad had made an old garbage trailer into a camping trailer that would sleep 4, two on the top and two on the bottom. Being the oldest, Andy and I got the most comfortable spots on the bottom and Dallin and Alex had to sleep on the top.
Once our bags were packed we all went out to clean up our bikes. Andy had already claimed Wild Fire so I took Double Jeopardy. All of our bikes had names, I know that most people don’t name their bikes, but most people don’t have some 200 bikes to choose from either. Naming the bikes was just easier that saying the blue one, you know not the blue one with the white wall tires and not the blue one with a red seat, but the blue one that has some green on the pedals. Wild fire got its name because it had a sign on it that said Wild fire, not too complicated. Double Jeopardy was called Double because my dad had welded a second set of handle bars on top of the original ones. We also had Triple Jeopardy, Black Beauty, Knight Rider, as well as several other names. Wild Fire was the best, I have no reason for this, we just all knew that hands down Wild Fire was the best bike to ride. Dallin took Triple Jeopardy. Alex was so short he didn’t have much of a choice so he just took the shortest bike, he had just turned four and was just out of diapers, but he could ride a bike better than most 5 year old girls.
Just before lunch we heard the roar of Dad’s 1977 brown Mustang, with a custom black racing stripe painted down the middle, come around the corner. After lunch we would be off to the mountains. All of the other camping equipment had been loaded the night before because it was no small project, we were not what you would call casual campers. My dad had invented everything from as simple as a camp bathroom to a camping shower, water heater, and smokeless fire. We might not have had a nice family camping trailer, but we did camp in luxury, at least during the part of the camp that was between put up and take down. It took at least 3 to 4 hours to set up camp and to take it down. Then, after arriving at home it took a good day to clean and put away all of the wonderful treasures. My dad was very particular and had to have everything done a certain way. Everything was organized, but not in a way that anybody else could ever figure out.
“Andy, Bryan get out here and help me get these bikes on the back of the trailer,” my dad commanded in a mater of fact way.
Once the bikes were loaded, we were loaded. I climbed into the back of the truck after Dallin and Alex climbed between all of the gear and nestled in somewhere underneath all the camp stuff like a couple of little rodents. After Andy got in it was time for the food. The coolers were the last to be packed in. One went on my side and another at my feet. I was as packed in as any sardine ever has been. I hoped that I wouldn’t get an itch on the way to our destination as my arms had been pinned to my sides. It wasn’t too bad, only an hour and a half trip and although I couldn’t see out of the truck, or any of my siblings, I was able to look at the blue sky, which stayed pretty much the same until we pulled into the canyon and I could see the tops of some of the trees. Without being able to see anything, including my watch, I felt like we were driving to the moon.
At last we had arrived, and not a moment too soon because I was beginning to get a cramp in one of my legs. Our bikes were unloaded first. Andy and I had mounted them like lightning and were about to take off.
“Not so fast boys, we have got to get camp set up before the fun begins,” my dad loved to spoil the fun.
The next few hours were not only boring, but painful. I hated holding poles in place and this year my dad had added a few features to our camp site so we had even more labor to perform.
“This is completely stupid, it’s going to be dark soon and we are still doing stupid things that nobody cares about except for Dad,” I secretly and defiantly complained to myself. From the looks on my brothers’ faces, I could tell that they were thinking the same thing. I looked over at Dallin and he was digging away in his nose with his finger up to his knuckle. Then I noticed Alex in the corner of my eye pulling a bug apart prior to its consumption. I broke out in laughter as I pointed out the fiasco to Andy. The vibration from our laughter made the poles swing back and forth. The repercussions were quick and we at once realized our error and straightened to attention. The sudden pressure inside my head from holding everything in exploded with a fury, snot flew everywhere. My brothers couldn’t hold back any longer and the tarp came crashing to the ground. The good thing about my dad was that his temper was quick and furious, but it usually did not last. How he didn’t find a boy trying to hold a metal pole still while covered in snot hilarious I’ll never know. With the camp set up to my father’s approval Andy, Dallin and I sped off on our bikes while Alex stayed behind to eat more bugs and dirt. For some reason riding bikes in the mountains is so much more exciting than riding bikes in the city.
There was a paved trail that went half-way around the lake. After the dam the trail turned to dirt. We decided to take the trail all the way around instead of turning back. Not long after that decision we realized that we had made a mistake. Not only was the pathway dirt, but there were fallen trees all along the pathway. As the evening grew darker, the woods grew scarier; at one point I swear I saw a dragon.
“Stop!”
I turned around to see that Dallin had twisted an ankle trying to climb over one of the fallen trees. We were still quite a ways form our camp or any help at all. Andy and I took off as fast as we could to get help and left Dallin to fend off the dragon with nothing but a stick and some rocks. The going was tough, but I was brave, so brave in fact that during the long trek to find my dad I came up with a name for myself; Super Bike Boy. In my mind I became a superhero and as such I would have a difficult, but rewarding life ahead of me.
The next morning my superhero dreams came to a crashing end when I realized that a good superhero would not play in Stinging Nettle and be covered head to foot in a horrible rash. Dallin and Alex had a fun time of my misery, but there was nothing funny about it. Try accomplishing simple daily tasks like walking or going to the bathroom with an awful rash. After the rash subsided the rest of the camping trip was filled with boating, bike riding, hiking and bugging our grandparents, I think they were extremely relived to see us go after three long days of tracking dirt into their gently used trailer equipped with a toilet, full kitchen, and comfortable beds.
The trip, like many others that would come in the future, was filled with memorable moments, moments that could only be worth something if they are shared with others. I learned on our camping trips that even though brothers smell funny in the morning, and were extremely annoying they were my best friends. Not only did we enjoy being around each other, but we accepted each other as we were and we made each other stronger.

Firewood

Collecting firewood was one of the Neanderthals favorite activities. After a long night of sleeping on fairly uncomfortable rocks they were always filled with joy when in the morning they got to leave their campsite in search of things to burn. This type of behavior was fine for a few hundred years ago, but in this day and age when coal is not even used to fuel the furnace, it simply does not make any practical sense. I am not a Neanderthal and as a non-Neander I also am not a fan of hunting and gathering, in other words I am an Anti Neander-Hunter-Gatherer, we even have our own bumper stickers. Even after making this point of my philosophy clear to my parents, they still insisted that I help with the family’s annual fall gathering of firewood, although they did allow me to keep my Anti Neander-Hunter-Gatherers club. I suppose that I should not complain about this amazing opportunity to help warm my home, after all it did bless me with several burns, cuts, bruises, calluses and muscles.
“Hold it still!” my dad yelled without looking up.
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” I attempted to reply to my dad’s command, but it wasn’t to be heard over the loud hum of the circular saw. I really was trying to hold the 2x4 steady, but I happened to not only have a fear of loud sounds, but of machines that could cut off my arm as well. My dad was strong and extremely capable of controlling dangerous power tools, but for some strange reason I still got nervous when my hand came only inches from a sharp, moving blade. Saturday mornings in the fall were always occupied by the same activity, cutting up pallets. Just like other kids I would rush to the front window when I heard my dad’s truck engine signaling his arrival home from work. Unlike other children, however I was not necessarily rushing to the window as a giddy schoolboy in anticipation of seeing my father. I was searching for something different; pallets. I was crossing my fingers hoping, praying that he would only have a few pallets in the back of his truck. On those all too often occasions when I saw the truck full of pallets, I knew that at least half of my Saturday would be eaten up in cutting and hauling firewood. My parents had a furnace installed in their home solely for cosmetic purposes, the beast had no functional purpose. In the 19 years that I lived in my parents’ home I never once remember the furnace being used for anything more than a good place to hang interesting magnets. My family did however own three wood burning stoves. These stoves were our sole source of heat for the winter. My father worked at ANR, a trucking company, and his company was always happy to give him all of the broken pallets that he wanted. This is one reason why my nighttime prayers always include a blessing on the pallets; that they would be whole, strengthened and not break.
After cutting the pallets, the hauling began. All of the boys who were of age, which meant that we were able to walk, were required to haul all of the cut up pieces of wood to the backyard. This was our penance for warmth during the winter. Even though the circular saw had been turned off, danger still loomed. Every Saturday at least one of the boys would run in to mom screaming because they had a splinter the size of a beam protruding out of one of their fingers. Unless this injury happened to occur towards the end of the wood’s migration to the backyard, we were always expected to return. The splinters were not the scariest part of this child labor. The journey to the backyard included a perilous “squeeze” between my dad’s two prize trucks a 1974 Chevy with a custom paint job (no scratches) and a light blue 1952 Heavy Chevy. I remember on more than one occasion losing my load of wood and hitting one of the two trucks. Even though the trucks were covered in multiple layers of blankets, the repercussions for such an act were, shall we say extremely “uncomfortable.”
After we had hauled all of the wood to the wood pile it was time to clean up the mounds and mounds of sawdust. I would grab the broom and one of my brothers would grab our “pooper scooper” shovel and we would throw the sawdust over the garden. To this day when I see the scars on my fingers and forearms I remember those cold winter days huddled in front of a warm fire and sipping my mom’s extra creamy homemade hot chocolate.
“Now aren’t you glad that you helped your father today. Without the wood you kids would be freezing?” my mom asked.
“We do have something called a furnace,” I grumbled. “Then we could actually be warm in all parts of our house and we could stop using my bedroom as an extra freezer.”
“You are being very ungrateful, what do you think we would do with the cow that we had the butcher cut up without the extra freezer space?”
When it came right down to it I knew my mother was right, frostbite was much better than starvation.

BIrthdays

Birthdays were something special at our house, so special in fact that we often “saved them” for a better day just as a child would his or her Halloween candy, or as dogs often do with their bones. Cakes, pictures of the cakes, and fighting were all important aspects of our birthdays, in fact the absence of just one of these vital features would have made our birthdays unworthy of the name birthday.
My mom made the best chocolate cake in the entire world, or at least on our block. This cake was made from scratch, and took hours to prepare. When mom was finished we knew it because she spent the next 12 hours in her recliner recuperating. Making it necessary to either cook the cake in advance or to postpone the birthday. Mom knew how much we loved her cake so she started making double, triple, and even quadruple batches. The cakes eventually became big enough to feed three hungry boys, an annoying little chipmunk named Alex ,who always got into the cake face first thus spoiling a good portion of it for the rest of us, and a cute baby girl for more than a week. My mom had to start using giant cookie sheets and making the cake rectangular instead of circular. We were always given the opportunity to choose a theme for our gigantic, delectable pastry. I loved bread, especially my mom’s homemade French bread, so one year I decided to decorate my cake by placing a miniature loaf of bread on the top. Years later my parents would explain to me that that was the first of my many odd behaviors that led them to the decision to test me for rabies.
If the cake was important to our birthdays, a picture of the cake was essential. Even more than being a tasty treat, the main purpose of the cake was to load it full of candles, haul it outside and take hundreds of pictures with the lucky sucker who had just lived another year. Upon looking through our family’s scrapbooks you would immediately notice an abnormally large amount of different kids’ pictures all holding a lit birthday cake and sporting a forced, cheesy grin.
Fighting was never a planned part of the celebrations, but inevitably came. Much of the fighting came from pent of feelings of frustrations for not having been able to invite any friends.
“This is a family affair,” is what my parents would always say. As I look back on those celebrations now that forced “togetherness time” actually did help to create a sense of unity between my siblings and I. That feeling of unity was usually absent, however on the chosen day of glee.
One of the worst fights came on Alex’s third birthday. He was so excited to shred and eat all of his wrapping paper, but it was not meant to be. The older three boys were just returning from a bike ride with my dad. Just as we were rounding the corner to our house Dallin biffed it.
“Nice shot,” I yelled back at him just as my dad was spinning around to check out what all of the commotion was.
“Foot-sack-it!” my dad yelled (this was a phrase that he only used right before he lost it). “What did you do to the bike?” he bellowed.
By the time we walked into the backyard Dallin was in tears and my dad was even more furious that Dallin had put a scratch on the frame of his bike. Dad had not yet, however notice the blood squirting out of Dallin’s open wounds.
“David don’t you see that your son is more important than a stupid bike,” mom was furious, and we all knew better than to get in the middle of our parents at a time like this.
“Foot-sack-it!”
The next thing that we heard was the slamming of the upstairs bedroom door. Then Alex started screaming in an attempt to out scream Dallin who was screaming “Owie! Owie! Owie!” at the top of his lungs. I wanted to join in the fun so I stuck my finger into the frosting and flung it in Andy’s face just in time for mom to see it. Andy and I were sent to our room while my mom cleaned up Dallin and Alex got to enjoy his birthday running through the yard free of supervision, and more importantly unencumbered by his clothes which he had shed shortly after we had all entered the house.

About Being Shy

I was born with a disease. Before you feel too sorry for me you should know that I did not have leprosy, scurvy, turrets, or any other disease in which your skin and ears fall off. Simply put, I was shy. This was not the kind of shy that is found in the famous story of The Pigfaced Man and the Man That May Be Ugly, but He Sure is A Lot Better Looking Than The Pigfaced Man. Just in case you did not have a devoted mother like I did, that read you bedtime stories every night by pressing play on the tape recorder, I will go ahead and wear out the keys on my expensive keyboard by summarizing the famous story for you. It goes something like this:

Once upon a time there was a pigfaced man and a man that may have been ugly, but he sure was a lot better looking than the the pigfaced man who lived in this story.

One day the pigfaced man was out for a walk and literally ran into the man that was ugly, but he sure was a lot better looking than the pigfaced man that was now staring down at him.

“Wow you are ugly,” said the ugly, but not too scary man.

“Oh dear,” replied a slightly embarrassed pigfaced man.

That kind of shyness did not even approach what I would deem worthy of labeling a disease like mine. No, my disease was much worse than the pigfaced man’s timidness. My shyness was debilitating, numb causing, even bowel activating.

In preschool, the other boys got together and wanted to tie me to the bridge that went over the duck pond because they thought I must be a mute. It was only my superhuman speed that would save me at the last minute, except for the fact that I happened to be wearing my red Snoopy boots that were a few sizes to big for me.

Later in kindergarten, I was so petrified of all the other students that I would stand in the corner at recess thinking to myself, “If all of these other kids just new that I was a private investigator, then I would have friends.” My favorite show at the time was Magnum P.I, and in my mind I was Tom Selleck without the mustache, but with the tiny shorts.

Unfortunately, my shyness was a disease. My poor tummy would get so upset that I would come home from school sick most of the time. I remember one time walking down to Reams, the local grocery store, with my mom. When we were in the meat section my mom was buying a few pounds of ground beef and I was staring at the dead, skinless cows hanging from the ceiling through the glass when a stranger said something to me.

“Neat, huh?” was all that the man said.

All the way home my stomach felt horrible. The pain only subsided once I was in the comfort of my home.

In all honesty if it had not been for my mom I would have never ventured from our home because of my total fear of anything that happened to living. She never told me to knock it off, grow up, or thicken up, she just listened. When I was upset, she listened. That is how my mom has always been. She cares about her kids and she wants to know what is going on in their lives, detail by detail. Unfortunately, she also wants to let us know what is going on in her life detail by detail. My siblings and I all learned an important lesson: if you don’t have an unlimited amount of time, don’t ask even the most simple question. The act of eating a piece of cheese might go unremembered by most, but not by my mom.

“How was your day, mom?” I might say.

“Well let me tell you something that happened to me today. It all started when I was hungry. I had these pains in my stomach so I said to myself, ‘Cheryl you’re dying,’ but then I thought better of it and realized that it had been two whole hours since I had eaten anything and you know how sick your sister and I get if we don’t eat. So anyway I am headed to the fridge right? And what do you know but the telephone rings. I walked over to the phone and picked it up and then I said hello. It was Alex.

“I can’t talk now, but I am coming over,” was all that he said.

Can you believe how insensitive he can be sometimes? I mean here I am in a hypoglycemic state and he doesn’t even have a minute to talk to his mother. Anyway, I hung up the phone and headed back toward the fridge. As I was walking through the hall I noticed some money I had dropped earlier, but I had no time to stop because I was on a mission. I finally reached the fridge. I reached out my right hand grabbed the handle on the door and I swung open the door violently searching for a piece of cheese. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the pre-sliced piece of Tillamook that I had purchased at Costco earlier that day. Which by the way was on a great sale. I carefully opened the package and took out one piece of cheese. I then sat that piece of cheese on the counter while I closed the package and put it back in the crisper. I closed the door and turned for my prize. After removing the grease absorbing piece of paper I took my first bite. Instantly I felt my horrible sickness alleviated. It was a miracle I even made it to the fridge.”

If I only had the time, I would love to write her biography. Can you imagine the detail? The funny thing is that if I have ever had a spare couple of hours, I have enjoyed listening to her rambling, pointless stories. Maybe it is because I feel guilty, or maybe it is my way of paying her back for all the times she listened to my immature whining about ridiculous boyhood problems, or maybe it’s just because she is my mom and I actually do care.