There's Something About Home, Growing Up, and Girls

Chapter Nine

There's Something About Home, Growing Up, and Girls

At the bottom of a hill, on a corner lot, at the intersection of Crestwood and 9108 Shoreview Lane is a house, a refuge, a place of hopes and dreams, a place that no matter how far I travel, or how long I go, it will always think of it as the place I call home. In this place I grew from a young boy to a young man, although the later is a point of dispute to some.

Our family lived in this house where lives were shaped and reshaped, and then shaped again. And then just about the time you think you figure out just who you are, you suddenly, and surprisingly discover you aren't. Somehow, someway, you have morphed into some sort of thing you no longer recognize.

Our street was a lot like any other street in the suburbs with a sidewalk that ran in front.

Outside fathers and sons worked on the lawn while inside mothers and daughters made apricot fried pies. The smell would slip out the front door and rush into my nostrils. I loved fresh apricot fried pies. Yep, we were the typical middle class American family blinded by our own borders. Our little place on this planet was safe and secure, free from distractions, well, except maybe a few wild go-cart races around the block. Amber Ingles' cat got caught under the wheel of Jimmy Sander's and was smashed flat. In three years, it was the only fatality.

Yep, memories were being made here, memories that wouldn't die, memories that sometimes get a little fuzzy in the retelling. Facts somehow seem to change with the passing of time. But the true facts are never so exciting as the imagined ones, like the one Jimmy tells about the two headed man he saw as he fish tailed his cart around the far corner of our block. Nobody ever believed his story anyway, but he was convinced in what he saw. That explains why the next day we changed the course route; that and the fact we were eluding the cops waiting for us.

I entered 7^th grade a shy introvert. I know, it seems odd that only last year I was the wild and crazy guy that painted Mrs. Anderson's white cat black. She didn't recognize it for a week.

It seems that overnight I had changed into a person I hardly recognize. Who was I, and what was I becoming?

I was Mr. Clean, Mr. Respectful. Mr. All American Boy. For some strange reason that's what my sister Mary Ellen liked to call me. She hated me...well, not really, but she did have a problem with the image thing.

Most of my teachers had had my older brother Steve in their class a few years earlier so they sort of looked at me with disdain. He wasn't exactly the poster child for The Boy Scouts. In fact, he was quite the opposite. He hadn't left much of a mark for me to ascend.

But he was my older brother and I looked up to him as my hero. I always secretly wanted to be like him, but the Mr. All American thing, well, I'm as confused as anyone. How did I come to be me?

My theory is, deep down inside, I wanted people to like me, and not just my friends, but everybody, even my parents. I know, that just insane, right.

Don't misunderstand me, I still rang doorbells and ran, smashed pumpkins on Halloween, and once helped pick up Father O'Malley's VW beetle and place it on the sidewalk, but nothing really devious really.

Okay, so I shot Sandra Wilson's little brother in the leg with my BB gun. You should have seen him go down. It was just like watching an old western when John Wayne would gun down one of the bad guys. Problem was, Bubba, that's what Sandra called her brother, was no bad guy.

I was grounded from my gun for a month. The local bird population was glad for it too.

Sandra was my age and cute. Thing was, we were not really interested in each other romantically. I liked her a lot, but only as a best friend. I think she felt the same way too.

I was age of learning about girls, things like...well, girls are different. I discovered I understood absolutely nothing about these exotic, beautiful creatures that seem so harmless.

I began questioning the very wisdom of God himself. I mean, how could he have made something so terribly opposing to the beliefs of mankind.

We are guys, we hunt, gather, play football, hit each other, push one another around, fight. And when it's all over, we get up, shake hands, and all matters are settled.

Girls...well, just what do girls do? It's like I said, they're a complete mystery.

They play dress up with dolls, hug teddy bears, fight with fang and nails, scratching clawing and mauling one another to the death. And when all is said and done, it's not over...ever. Girls, I discovered, hold grudges for years, decades, perhaps centuries.

Girls are emotional time bombs set to detonate at the slightest hint of...well, that's the problem, you see, I don't know what. Ask any guy and he'll tell you the same thing.

The whole boy girl thing is an anomaly of gigantic proportion. I don't believe anybody fully understands it, and that's where things get a little funny, because I think God, in all his wisdom, planned it that way. That's probably the reason God isn't married, or at least, not that I know of, I mean, you never hear him talk about a wife, that is, unless you think of the church as being his wife, which is another matter altogether.

Early in my 7^th grade year a girl named Vickie broke my heart. She was an upper upperclassmen. After that I sorta' played the field. That was it, I had had enough of this broken hearts club until...

I met Denise at a spring break dance. I noticed her right off. She was the perfect girl, funny, nice, pretty, and most importantly, she seemed to actually like me. We danced all night. I was all set to ask her to be my girlfriend when we got back from spring break, but she and her parents moved to Michigan.

WHAT? Who moves TO Michigan? I thought all the smart people moved away that frozen tundra of a waste land. Well, there is that big lake out there, I suppose that deserves some appreciation of things beautiful, but ...Michigan?

It just wasn't my year for girls. Not only were they confusing, but they kept leaving.

But as I've grown older in years I've come to the conclusion that there are some things that just aren't meant to be understood. Having become wise in my old age...perhaps wise is a little...well, I don't know what, but having grown a little something, I've wondered, do girls understand us, or are they as clueless as us. I think they think they do, but well...they think a lot of stuff.

Author's Note

Well, I've been gone for quite some time. Perhaps I should have stayed away.