Finally A family

Well, as time went on my mom came to the realization that we had a family, and my dad wasn't going to leave. So I guess we all settled in for "family" life. As you can see my dad was a strict disciplinarian. He would tell me stories of his experiences as First Sergeant in the army. So I grew up believing that if you did something wrong, you got punished.

The first "sexual" experience for me happened when I was about 3 years old. I was dropped off at a baby sitter who had children of their own. I met a little girl about my age and we played together. She pulled off her shorts and was naked. She sat on the grass and said,"It feels funny on my backside." So I joined her, then we started sitting on things like the concrete steps, the sand box, a wood board, just because it felt funny. A couple of the older kids told us to get dressed, so we did. They then said that they were going to tell on us, but I didn't know what for. In retrospect, it really wasn't a sexual thing since it was done out of total innocence.

One of the things I enjoyed was when my dad would drive up to pick my brother up every other weekend, he would take me and my mom along, for the 2+ hour drive, but sometimes me and my mom would stay at home, and she would cleaned up the house. Well when my dad left, my mom would turn the radio station from the oldies of the 1940's and 50's to current music. I was allowed to watch the "Monkeys" on TV. This was the way my mom expressed her wild side. We were still a poor family living in a row house. My mom grew her own vegetables and used lye soap on a washboard for the laundry. Disney world had just opened, and I had a poster of it on the wall, it was more of a wish than anything else. My dad had nick names for our neighbors, to the left of us was dago Mary and her pigshit Irish husband Pat moron (the last name was Moran). Next to him was gypsy Joe a postman that drank like a fish and would sleep it off while he was supposed to be delivering the mail. The post office eventually fired him when they found 6 sacks of undelivered mail in the trunk of his car. At the top of our street was a girl named Shirley, who had only 2 fingers on her right hand. She wore some sort of leather device that allowed her to pick things up. I never really noticed, we were too busy making mud pies or playing chutes and ladders. She must have been very self conscious, because she hid her hand from the camera in all the pictures we took. To the right of us was my friend Michael and his dad who was a police officer, and his wife who my dad said had a nice puss (I thought he meant a nice smile) We got to know the police officer, Paul and found out that he did not like hippies at all. He said that him and his buddies would grab hippies, (long hair types) throw them in the back of the van, beat them up, take their wallets, then drop them off at 2:00 AM in the black high crime section of the city. Michael would come over to play, but always seamed to have a switch blade knife, he said his dad would give him the knives. Michael's dad liked to drink, and would make promises to his son to take him to a ball game or fishing, but would never show up. Michael would usually end up going with us to a drive-in or to a county park. One time I was at the park riding my tri-cycle, and there was a group of mentally challenged adults there. One of them wanted to ride my tri-cycle. I was pedaling as fast as my little feet would go, to get away from him. They managed to catch the guy before he caught up to me, but I guess it would look silly if you were watching it happen. A funny story about Paul, my mom went next door to see if I was with Michael playing. Paul answered the door in a bath robe and said I wasn't there, but without missing a beat, he undid his robe to display his manhood to my mom. My mom, without missing a beat started laughing and walked away. Another time he came over our house on the pretext that he was looking for his son, Michael. My mom stepped out on the porch to talk to him. He then lifted her up in the air, and said he would not put her down till she gave him a kiss. My mom said," I hope your strong, because you will be holding me up for a long time". He eventually put her down. Since my dad was in the army, I would play army all the time. We had a set of woods across the street from our house, and I was there frequently. Then came the winter, I was bugging my mom and dad all year for a kitty cat. They said no, so I pleaded my case to Santa Clause. I wrote a letter saying I didn't want any toys, just a kitty cat. Well on Christmas eve of 1969 we heard a faint whimpering meow. We went outside to find cat tracks and a blood trail, that lead to our porch. We found a male tabby cat too week to walk any further. Of course we took the cat in, but ONLY TIL HE GETS BETTER. Well, you know how that goes, and we now had our cat. I started first grade in 1970, and the kids in school picked on me, because my ears stuck out and had buck teeth, and my hair was short. I dressed in clothes that looked like that came from the 1950's. All our clothing came from the Salvation Army or the thrift store. On the other hand, I had no problem with girls, maybe because I was the only boy paying any attention to them. One time our school went to the circus, and was having a good time kissing my girlfriend Michelle. In school we were told to pray, so I did, and I could hear the other kids praying for candy or a bike or anything else that could come into a first graders head. I started to pray for these things as well, but after a few days, I realize that I had just about everything that I wanted, so I started praying silently for God to give bikes and candy to kids that may never had them. Using time and materials wisely was not my strong suit, in fact my teacher would pick one kid every day that did something good and put a note on the bulletin board, with their name on it, to take home to their parents. I never seemed to get a note for me, but then one day there it was, a note with a gold star, to take home to my parents. Well I waited too long for this, do you think I would just run up and take my note down and run it to my parents. I left that note up there as long as I could, I wanted everyone in the class to see it every day. It was only when the teacher said,"If you don't take that note home, I am going to remove it from the bulletin board" I got my 3 weeks of fame out of it, I guessed that was long enough so I took it home to a very happy mom and dad. My first grade teacher and the gym teacher had a kind of a crush on each other. Any time between periods they would giving each other their undivided attention. The reason I know this, is that one day a couple of the boys that picked on me told her that I was poking them. All I knew is that she took me in the back room and said,"why are you poking the other students?" I said, I didn't poke anyone. She started yelling at me "WHY ARE YOU POKING THE OTHER STUDENTS" then she said that she was going to put me in a cage and let all the students poke at me with sticks. She kept getting louder, and started slamming locker doors. Hey, I was just a little kid, I broke down crying my head off , but I kept saying I didn't do it, I didn't do it.