By all accounts, I was a very good boy until I turned 3. We moved into a new house when I was 3 and I consequently turned into a bad boy for a few years. I blame the new house.
I thought our new digs were in need of artistic expression of some type, so the day after we moved in, I took my dad’s pistol-gripped oil can and proceeded to squirt abstract “oil” paintings on all 4 dining room walls. My family did not share my artistic vision. Maybe sculpture was more to their liking?
A week or so later, I gathered a bag of dog poop pieces from around the neighborhood, sculpted some into interesting shapes, kept others au natural, then placed each in its own window pane ledge on the first 3 rows of our bay window. I then invited neighborhood kids and their parents over for free admission to my marvelous art show. The neighbors laughed (not my intended reaction), but when mom found out, she didn’t think it was so marvelous.
Shortly after that, our new green carpet looked to me like grass in need of watering, so I retrieved the oscillating sprinkler from the lawn and watered our living room carpet…and walls and ceiling. The only thing that grew from that sprinkling was the swelling of my buttocks from the spanking I received (yes, parents still spanked in the ‘60’s, much to my dismay).
I blame mom for this one: My classmates and I were building a huge paper-mache project in first grade, a complete farm scene taking up a large corner of our classroom. There was a modern farmhouse, a large barn, animals of all type…all kinds of stuff. It was a big deal and it was starting to all come together after a couple weeks. It was an architectural achievement that would have made Frank Lloyd Wright green with envy, I tell you. Anyway, one day I ran out of paste and my teacher, Mrs. Right, told me to ask my mother to buy more paste at the store. Well, everybody else’s mother simply went to the store and bought their kid a jar of that standard white paste with the brush under the lid. But, no, not my mom, she insisted on cooking up her own home-made paste. And, so she did. And, I pleaded with her to not make me take it to school (just buy me real paste, ma). It smelled like death warmed over, mixed with limburger cheese.
So, I bring this fetid goop to school and start using it to build more paper mache animals. I didn’t like the annoying kid working next to me, so I made him take a lick of my mom’s paste. He then projectile vomited all over our beautiful project, destroying it. The teacher marched the whole class out into the hall, while the grumpy janitor cleaned up the vile mess. You’d think the vomiting kid would be the one in trouble, but no, I was the one who caught the heat. She scolded me and told me to tell my mom to buy paste from the store from now on. (Interesting side note about Mrs. Right: I don’t know how young most kids start to develop erotic feelings, but I definitely had them for Mrs. Right when I was 6 years old. She was a looker. I used to imagine her pulling my pants down and using my buttocks as a writing pad in front of the class. What would Freud make of that?).
What boy doesn’t want to cook wieners over a camp fire? I sure did, but it was winter and too cold to cook outside. So I built a campfire on the cement floor of our basement using scraps of wood from dad’s woodshop, mom’s cigarette lighter and charcoal igniter fluid. Everything was going just fine and I was about to put the stick-pierced wieners on the fire. But then, the ceiling caught fire and dad, smelling smoke waft from the kitchen floor, ran quickly down the cellar stairs and extinguished my bonfire post haste. Party pooper.
Unbeknownst to my family, I caught 3 snakes in the woods by our house and made a temporary home for them in a large pretzel tin which I placed on the kitchen table. During lunch, my new-found reptilian pets popped open the pretzel lid and began slithering out. I had no idea my mom and sister could scream that loud.
I didn’t realize my 85 year old grandfather was coming down the stairs when I lit a full string of Black Cat firecrackers in the living room next to the stairwell. I had no idea pop-pop could scream that loud. And although he looked pretty funny sliding the rest of the way down the stairs on his butt, he failed to see the humor of the situation.
It got so mom dreaded answering the front door. Too many times it was some kid’s mom ranting and blaming me for all types of trumped up infractions against their precious spawn. Little Chrissy’s mom bitched about me tearing the buttons off her snowflake’s blouse—we were playing doctor and I was screening her kid for breast lumps; she should have thanked me for the check-up. Brian’s mom had a hissy-fit when her little brat came home crying…and bleeding. Hey, he refused to put away my comic books after I kindly let him peruse them. So, I went all “John Wayne” on him with my BB gun. Cry baby.
But, the kid who was on the receiving end of most of my neighborhood wrath was Albert. Albert the Ass. In my defense, if you’re an annoying kid, whose nose is always running, and your name is “Albert”, you kinda deserve what you get. I used to beat poor Albert up on a regular basis. Luckily at age 6 or 7, I didn’t have much muscle mass, so the beatings were more humiliating than harmful. But still, Albert’s battle-ax of a mother didn’t see it that way and was out for my blood every time I accosted her sweet sonny-boy. They lived on the side street behind our house, so whenever I had a run-in with Albert and he went running home, I’d peer through the back window, waiting for the she-walrus to come waddling down the street toward our house. I’d yell, “Mom, please don’t answer the door!” But, alas, she always did, and I always got in trouble.
Once, me and my band of mini-droogs, tired of engaging in the ol’ in and out (in and out of each other’s houses, you perverts), decided to track down Albert and beat him up…which we did. Albert’s dad, seeing the action though his den window flew out and ran to the rescue of his boy. We tried to scatter, but he caught each one of us by the scruffs of our neck and dragged us to his back yard, along with Albert, who now was looking pretty smug. His dad then proceeded to lecture us on the cowardice and unfairness of ganging up on people. He then dared the droogs and I to fight his son one-at-a-time, one-on-one, while he officiated. Albert looked a bit less smug upon hearing that suggestion; in fact he looked a little nauseous. However, dad must have thought his son was made of tougher stuff than he really was, because he sure looked shocked and embarrassed when we took him up on the offer and went about beating his son up, one at a time. Ah…good times. I do plan to make amends to poor ol’ Albert someday if he’s still alive. Hopefully, he changed his name to anything but Albert, or I might be tempted to beat him up again, in front of his wife and kids.
No one in my family believed me when I told them I saw a raccoon in the woods by our house. They laughed at me and said there was nothing but squirrels in the woods. So, I set a box trap out there with cat food bait. A couple days later, I triumphantly brought my boxed catch home and opened the cage in the living room. Lesson learned: wild raccoons don’t make the cute pets you think they will. In fact they’re rather hissy and bitey. Dad had to enlist the expertise of a neighbor mom (ex-farm girl) to extricate the varmint from our home. She grabbed the rodent by the nape of the neck and threw him out the front door.
But, I wasn’t all bad. I once received a special citation at our regional cub scout meeting for saving a neighborhood girl from drowning in the raging, white water of our local river (actually, it was more of a shallow, meandering stream, but that’s not important). I did, however, neglect to tell the troop leader that I was the one who pushed her into the water in the first place.
Then there was the big Pickle Battle of second grade one day during lunch in the cafeteria. Pickles were flying everywhere. Casualties were mounting; kids were being picked off big time. Pickle juice was flowing copiously. The smell of vinegar hung heavy in the air. The commotion prompted our teacher to turn and run toward the mayhem to put an end to the pitched battle. Upon arrival, she witnessed all of her pupils engaged in fevered pickle throwing. All of her pupils that is, except one…me. She saw me sitting cherub-like, with hands folded before me on the table, shaking my head disapprovingly at my heathen classmates. Back in class, teacher admonished the hooligans and told my classmates they should behave more like good master Tibby. Then she sentenced them all to in-class detention during recess. I spent that recess all alone outside, smug in the brilliant prescience I had to stop throwing pickles and fold my hands when I caught glimpse of the approaching teacher. Pays to be smarter than the average idiot.
I do feel bad about throwing my best friend under the bus (figuratively speaking) when I was 5. We were playing under the bridge that spanned the creek near my house and when a car passed by, I popped up and threw a rock at it. It connected. The car screeched to a stop and the red-faced driver emerged and quickly grabbed both David and myself by the arms and demanded to know who threw the rock at his car. “Not me”, said David. “Not me”, said I. “Alright”, he said, “I’ll figure it out.” He then told us each to grab a rock and throw it into the creek. David grabbed a rock and threw it hard, overhand, into the creek. Precocious boy that I was, I figured out what the angry driver was looking for, so I grabbed a rock and threw it softly, underhand, like a girl. The driver threw David in his car and sped off (this was the ‘60’s, kidnapping wasn’t frowned on so much back then). I didn’t think I see Dave again. But, alas, the driver just made my friend give him his home address and he drove to his house and got David in big trouble with his mom. Sucker.
I blame a good deal of my bad behavior on the trauma I received at the hands of my very bad older brother. He caused me much stress, which I suppose I may have internalized and twisted into less than proper behavior at times. The brute used to hang me upside-down over our second floor sundeck by my ankles (he was 8 years older and built like an ox), threatening to drop me if I didn’t confess to some misdeed he wanted me to confess to. He used to tell me he was turning on the hot water faucet in the shower, then pee on me. He was in charge of cutting my hair. I wanted long hair like the Beatles; he always gave me a crew cut. He used to make me eat cereal with ants in it—ants! On reflection the ants may have been the black spots on puffed rice, but he told me they were ants and I believed him. Worst of all, he was mom’s enforcer. She would sic him after me when I did something she perceived as being unbecoming of a young lad. She knew she couldn’t catch me…but, big brother, yeah, he had a chance. I could stay ahead of bro for a long stretch, but then he did something evil; a ruse that I always fell for. He would stop running after me, put on a smile and say, “c’mon, I’m just kidding around, you’re not in trouble.” Gullible me always stopped and let him catch up. Then, he beat the crap out of me. I’m waiting for the day he gets admitted into a nursing home, then it’s payback time.
I’m proud to report that bad Tibby reformed over time and I once again became a good boy by the time I hit middle school (well, mostly). And, by all accounts, I’m a good man. But, my daughters?…damn, those demons are hell on wheels. They make bad Tibby look like a choir boy by comparison. And, they thrive on embarrassing me at every opportunity. They seem to enjoy it, can you believe that? I can’t wait till the grand-kids arrive, then they will get their comeuppance.
