Pages From The Memory Vault Book III Part V

The year was 1987. At least that was the year I remember, because that was the actual year my mom remarried. My dad wouldn't repeat the deed for another year, so for now, we'll stick to 1987. We were living at Pines West apartments when I remember getting the news that the marriage was actually going to happen, but I felt very odd thinking I barely knew the guy, let alone wondering how well my mom could have actually known him. As it turns out, it was pretty well because he was her boss at the company they both worked for. I had only really met him a few times, but he began coming over more and more often and really trying to integrate himself (more like acclimate) into our lives. His name was Bill McGraw and he was to become my step dad. Well, until his passing in 2005. But we'll hit on that later, too.

Oddly, the one major time I remember Bill really showing his cool side -really kind of the opposite of how I can only imagine how my dad would have handled the same situation- while we lived at Pines West is kind of a funny story. You see, Chad, Kerry (you remember them, right?) and I had been invited to stay the night over at Chad's dad's house, whom I'd only ever met maybe twice in five years. We thought it'd be fun to hang out, watch movies, and let his dad buy us pizza. So we went over there and had a really good time. Well, until we found out that Chad's dad was a bit of a (ahem) 'Porn Movie Afficionado'. Well, we wanted a big slice of that action since Chad and I had never really seen much in the way of porn on film, just layouts in magazines. So after we figured Chad's dad had gone to sleep, he cued up the movie and we sat awestruck as hairy, wet majesty played out before us. Sadly, we just weren't fast enough to stop it when we heard footsteps approaching the family room where we were camping out. He caught us red handed and laid into Chad pretty good. He only mildly scolded us, because, as he said, we weren't his kids, but he was angry and ashamed. So, the next day after he dropped us off back at our homes, we were instructed to make sure we told our parents what had happened. So, rather than hide it (a skill I wouldn't perfect till years later), I went straight inside, and burst into tears as I regaled the whole sordid tale to my mom and Bill. After a moment of silence, Bill looked at me and asked, "Well? Was it any good?" That was the extent of my troubles with that issue. How cool was that? Yeah. We had a lot of those moments once they were married and we'd moved. Oh, yeah. The move...

We found out a month or so after the preceding incident that my mom had found an actual house for us. Unfortunately, the house was 25 minutes away in a town called Paw Paw. You see, as 'worldly' as I might have been in my own neighborhood and the surrounding few miles, I wasn't even aware that there was a town called Paw Paw. Seriously. I mean who names a town that? Portage was a city for the upwardly mobile, the Yuppies of society, the people who didn't work farms or own moonshine stills. But Paw Paw on the other hand... well, that town was one major surprise coupled with a nasty taste of disappointment. Soon, my mom and Bill and the three of us kids took a road trip (the back way from Portage I would eventually grow to know like the back of my hand) to Paw Paw to see where the house was and how it looked. Now, if you've never been on a back roads trip from Portage to Paw Paw, you pass through a few towns (Kalamazoo, Oshtemo, and Mattawan) before you even get to Paw Paw, and the scenery just gets bleaker and bleaker the further from advanced civilization you get. And I say that in the kindest possible way. We arrived in Paw Paw... deep in Paw Paw, as it turned out, and found our to-be house on a long road with maybe five neighbors. Where I was used to, a mile stretch of road netted you fifteen or twenty neighbors, and a somewhat close-knit feeling of safety. This house looked like it was lifted from 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. As it turned out, we were meeting the Realtor there to have look around and pick out which rooms we'd like to have. It was a very old farmhouse, something like 80 years or so, and had a big barn in the back and a smaller chicken house on the other side of the sprawling, overgrown yard. Behind us, spreading a few acres or so, was a field of winter wheat that was apparently ours, too. It was so incredibly bizarre seeing a house like this off of a dirt road with a rutted driveway where the paint was peeling from the siding and the surreal din of insects permeated the air. It was a building out of time... a time that shifted in our heads so uncomfortably that you could almost feel the tension of the twisting springs. But I had no say... this was where we were moving. And so we divvied up the bedrooms, took another look around as we gingerly paced the rickety, squeaky floors, and just prayed that the place wasn't riddled with angry poltergeists. The time had come to really make moving plans, and to pack. I was really going to miss Portage.

Next: The Move and The Wedding, or: Tales of a Terrible Summer

Pages From The Memory Vault Book III Part IV

Sorry about the gap again, but another, and far better change in jobs has made me a tad busy lately. Anyway, you're not here to hear about that. Let's make with the goodies...

This little trip down memory lane is going to be a bit of catch-up. You see, over the course of this little blog I have come to remember a few more tidbits from the years I have pretty much already covered. So, in order to be as thorough as possible, I thought I'd retrace a few of my steps and drop in some of these recently remembered memories. Cool? Cool.

The first one I can remember happened on the playground while I attended Central Elementary. The logistics are a bit fuzzy, but I do recall it centered around my 'girlfriend' Jenny Motycka (I air-quote that because I'm pretty sure I only assumed she was my girlfriend). Anyway, there was a new boy on the grounds, I think his name was Bobby Something... maybe McSomething. Look, I can't remember everything. Anyway, he was all up in my territory and I wasn't really thrilled about it. So, it just so happened that I was wearing hiking boots that day... steel toe, even, and I decided to take it upon myself to shove him in the dirt and kick him square in the eye. That's right: the eye. I don't know if I felt good about myself or not, but I did manage to gather quite a crowd who cheered me on. I also don't recall if Jenny was impressed or not. I'm gonna say likely not.

Another time was a time I pooped my pants. That wasn't the worst part. No, the worst part was that I was 12. Yup. That's right: 12. I was walking home from Junior High (Portage Northern) and I had stopped to get my MAD Magazine so I was a bit further from home than usual, and suddenly I was overcome by a horrible wave of nausea. You know what I mean: cool flashes, that sinking feeling in the pit of your guts that starts out rumbly and quickly escalates into a full-on Poo-Mergency (my brother coined that term, by the way). Well, I started speeding up my pace and clenching my butt, but time and the pressure of actually moving was having none of that clenching nonsense. And so, just as I hit the Haverhill playground -literally 1/2 mile from my house- the floodgates flew open and a very wet plop escaped and landed firmly like a moist baseball right into the mitt that was my pants. That was a fun one to try to hide in the laundry, let me tell you.

How about falling out of a tree? Anyone ever do that? That is not a fun time, let me tell you. Especially when you're about 20 feet up. There's more, but I won't bury the lead. So there I was, climbing up with one of my toy action figures in my hand, my brother just behind me (I think we were around seven and four because we still lived on Liszt). Suddenly, the branch I was using to swing on from one perch to another snapped clean of the pine tree, and I was a goner. I plummeted like a bloated corpse those 20 feet breaking several limbs on the way down. Sadly, they did very little to impede my descent and served only to really, really hurt. As I neared earth, I immediately realized that we had a really nice sandbox directly in my path... my path of my head. Luckily, I hit the ground at such an angle that the damage to my melon was limited, but it still hurt like hell. Knocked the wind out of me, too. I don't climb trees much, anymore.

Well, that's the skinny for now. See ya soon with a continuation of my life line... 

Pages From The Memory Vault Book III Part III (THE DREAM)

This at first didn't seem like the most appropriate place to write about a dream I just had last night, until it occurred to me that it kind of is. You see, I have a tendency to remember good sized chunks of my dreams and I have been able to for as long as I can remember. So, if you look at it that way, it is part of what makes me... me? Okay, on with this wacky nonsense...

For some reason it starts out in this epic, sprawling mall that always seems to make appearances in my dreams. Now I'm no Dream Scientist, but it's become increasingly obvious that this 'Mall' is what houses all of the little side tracks and stores to other dreams. Understand? It's like a way station to other dreams and it binds and connects every one of my dreams together, in a way. So there's the mall, and I'm wandering the middle of it through what appears to be some kind of show where sellers are peddling everything from cool action figures to comic books to art work. You see, this is my kind of joint. I love big, open 'Shows' like this and I'm particularly fond of Cinema Wasteland in Ohio where just such a thing goes on, only with a horror theme. Anyway, I was walking around and I stumble across a book that I really want. It appears to be some kind of graphic novel and the artist is right there at the table, so I get it signed.

I turn around and head for one of the stores where, oddly, I spot my mom. She tells me to go on in, and as I do, it instantly turns into a vast college campus and I'm climbing an exterior set of stairs into my dorm. My two roommates are people I've never seen before, but seem to be made of several people I used to know, like high school friends and such. So there we were, sitting around our dorm when the two of them begin smoking weed. I tell them I can't because I have to get a drug test for a job as a camp counselor at a Summer Camp where my kids are going. But the smoke gets heavy and I have to leave. At this point I just know that I breathed in a bunch of smoke and I need to think fast because the test is later that day. So, miraculously, one of my roomies pokes his head out and hands me a container of pee from a student that no longer goes to that school. He says they use it all the time to past tests. So I grab it and head out.

The next scene picks up apparently right after the test because there are a bunch of us college-age kids who have applied for counseling jobs sitting around a half circle of picnic tables watching an older lady talk about the job at hand. I'm listening, but also absently flipping through that book I bought at the Mall part of my dream. Suddenly, I'm surrounded my three cops who ask me to come with them and proceed to harass me about the fact that I am not who the pee test says I am and I'm no way a med student and not working at a hospital, and so forth. Everyone is staring as they escort me to their car and drive me 'downtown'. I was pleading with them that I didn't actually DO anything, but I had to use the fake pee because I was worried I'd not be able to counsel my own kids. They didn't listen, and I was brought to 'Jail'.

Well, 'Jail' definitely wasn't a Jail in the traditional sense of the word. In fact, it was more like a run-down doctor's office waiting room. Yeah, there were 'inmates' who were grungy and standard 'TV issue jail folk', but it didn't even sort of look like a jail. I the office of this jail was a lady who was handling all the cases. She was a no-nonsense woman who frequently called out numbers and told the riff-raff to 'Shut up!'. I was a little worried because I knew that if my wife found out I'd be in serious trouble. So, the woman came out and asked for my paper work and told me to explain to her what happened. I told her the story and she seemed sympathetic, but told me to wait anyway until a judgement could be passed. So I wandered back to the waiting room, and suddenly all of the ruffians from within were super friendly and we all sat around and read my book. Seriously. That's how it ended as I woke up. Wow. Bizarre.

Pages From The Memory Vault Book III Part II

It's exhausting taking such long breaks between posts because I lose track of what I was talking about and kinda get the wind sucked out of my sails. So, to recap, my parents were divorced, and my mom and the three of us (my brother, sister, and I) moved Fescue in the same neighborhood presumably to finish out the school year before we pressed on to a different location. I remember being in 7th grade... or at least the tail end of it, but this is the point in my Junior High career where I literally remember nothing about school. The fact that much of middle school is a blur doesn't help much, but the latter half of 7th and probably all of 8th are just not there. And I think it's because I was doing my part to balance a shattered family with education, and wrapping the whole mess in a bag full of personal demons and self aggravation. This will eventually lead to me visiting a shrink... but that's not for a while.

In the background my mother quietly began dating a member of my Dad's softball team. I think I mentioned that before. His name was Joe Nardelli, and he was built like a 'fire plug'. Stocky, barrel-chested, and slightly gruff... but all in all a decent guy. I'm not sure what my mom's plans for him were within the family structure. He already had two daughters of his own, right around my age, and there was just something about him that didn't really scream commitment. In fact (though he was around a bit) he never really tried to take on a paternal roll with the three of us, and that might be due to the fact that he new my dad pretty well and it was just really uncomfortable territory. Whatever the case, he wasn't there very long.

One thing I do remember is he took my brother and I out shooting once. Just into the woods with a shotgun and maybe a rifle. Up to that point I had never even held a gun that wasn't either loaded with plastic darts or BB's, or transformed into a robot, so I guess it was pretty exciting. We stood around some big trees and stumps and shot stuff. Seriously. That was it. I guess the guy was a pretty avid hunter, so that was why he had guns and wanted us to learn how to be men. Or else he was a bizarre serial killer with a conscience. Oh well, doesn't matter now.

But all the while, especially during weekends and vacation breaks, I was never home. I just didn't feel comfortable around anyone, especially my mom. It was whispered to me (by my dad, unsurprisingly) that it was her doing that they were divorced and that it was a big surprise to him. Well, since my dad was my dad, and just about the most prominent real-father figure I'd had (even aside from my best friend Kerry, who pretty much stayed out of the divorce advice territory) I believed him and began blaming mom, too. And it was right about then I began to realize that my parents had begun to use me against one another.

At first I didn't catch on. I'd just casually report messages from one to the other like some kind of twisted mailman. But then messages turned into little bits of information that I really didn't think I ought to be knowing about. But then I wised up and started using this little sick tennis match to my advantage. I became manipulative like you read about. I could, nearly every time, get what I want just by making myself seem upset and torn up over the messages I was relaying. And it worked. No divorced couple wants to see their oldest child -the one they were using as their own personal parrot- upset over what was essentially their fault in the first place. Well, I milked it for all it was worth and I got just about anything I wanted. For a while. Because eventually they did wise up. But the ride was fun while it lasted.

So what's next for everyone? Well, let's just say I acquire two Step-Parents in pretty rapid succession. That chapter's about to open wide, kids. Stay tuned...