Love: Serious Sad Sinister and too Happy

Star date: 1969

That's me in eight grade!

A little serious
A little sad
A little sinister

Always contemplating the world around me and probably more than anything else - HAPPY!  Probably too happy - that's what Jeffery's mom, Jeanette Lennon, thought... and always asked me why?

She asked why I was smiling - like it was a bad thing and interrogated me about my incessant whistling.  I really wasn't aware of it until she brought it up and realized that I didn't have a good answer and felt like maybe she was accusing me of  hiding something... like I had buried a million dollars in the backyard or a body or something. But, as I thought about her questions, I felt the answer did not lie in a hidden treasure,  but might have been the fact that I was actually a little retarded!

It seems to me that retarded people are always happy and I didn't have a good explanation as to why I felt so confident at times like one of those young characters in a Disney movie who was homeless and penniless - you know, one of those street rats who enjoyed the difficulty of fending for himself as I moved throughout the neighborhood like the artful dodger, bouncing from house to house, trying to avoid the traps set for me by the Wolf Pack.

Anyway, my brothers (the Wolf Pack) told me that I was retarded and I began to believe them. I suspected that something must have been wrong with my brain cells.
After all I wrestled an alligator click here: Reptile Dysfunction

Lost a battle with the Dreaded Veloci-Rooster Click here Prophet of Evil or Bird
Was buried alive  Kid in a Pit and a Water Hose
Survived the Monkey Fiasco at the LA Zoo Monkey Business

          Had my leg chopped off My death and long-haired hippies



Attacked by a whale... No lie - A Whale of a Tale!
and sent to Valhalla and back in the Hamper of Death Hamper of Death: I took the bait!
Not to mention that was I LEFT BEHIND by my family at Salton Sea Abandoned and LEFT BEHIND







I don't know what was wrong with me - after being shot and buried and attacked and tied up and caged and electrocuted and suffocated - to be left out and always made to feel like I was on the outside - if anyone had any reason to feel sad or sorry for himself - it was me! But, it's like I had this glow-plug thingy inside that burned with some kind of secret knowing.  It might have been the same thing that Joseph (you know, the younger brother in the Bible who had the coat of many colors) had burning in him, despite the fact, he had lots of mean older brothers who picked on him and tricked him, and threw him in a pit and left him behind.

Anyway, I didn't want the kids at Saint Marks grammar school to know I was retarded or had some kind of mental problem, because I was in love with Andrea and wanted to see what this thing that other people had a lot to talk about was all about. Though we had a million people living in our house...no one ever used the "L" word. I never heard it in a conversation and no one had ever said it to me. I wanted to know what it felt like and what it meant to be loved and to feel as though I mattered to someone.

LOVE!
What was it?
What did it mean?
Could that little cutie, Andrea possibly like someone like me - who was damaged goods? I had superpowers that helped me survive and that made me numb to a lot of physical torture and also might have made my heart numb as well. Was it possible for me to find out what love was and wanted to know that I could be loved and was becoming more and more desperate to find out?

Today was the day!  Happy, Smiling, Whistling, Markie D - the artful dodger would dare look up from his his shoes and mismatched socks and say a word to her.  Our eight grade nun, Sister Shultz, set us free for recess and today I would make the big move. During recess I wondered off from the boys reservation to where the girls congregated like the noisy seagulls at the beach and pretended the reason for invading their sacred territory was, because I needed a drink from the water fountain.

There was a little buzz when I walked by... and I felt like maybe they were talking about me... maybe even making fun of me. I hated that feeling. Things got quiet! I hated that even more it made me feel self conscience like they were looking through me with a magnifying glass and were mocking my insecurities and fear of the dark and flaws and shortcomings - like they were seeing all the trash and junk in our backyard as though that was me... Venice Trash Towers .  I doubted myself and my plan but continuing with my ruse, I put my mouth close to the disgusting fixture and turned the chrome handle on the porcelain fountain as if this drink of water was an important reason for being in the girl's corner of the schoolyard.

I took control of the situation and turned that handle with all the vigor I could muster. I would show those girls that I wasn't afraid of them or of afraid of what they thought of me. I was in love or something like that... at least I think I was... and this was my big shot at find out if I was worthy of someone's affection.

Speaking of my big shot - the water shot out with the force of the jet spray of a rocket ship and hit me right in the eye. Michael Boyle was known to take boogers and jam them into the water spickets - just for occasions like this.

Blinded, I reeled up and thought about how one of Michael's fat, gross, boogers had embedded itself in my eye socket, which triggered my vomit sensors and I ended up ingloriously puking my guts up in front of 30 laughing girls and the one I hoped to impress the most. EPIC FAIL!

Needless to say, today didn't go as planned. Sister Shultz scolded me and said, "That I shouldn't have put myself in that position." Like it was my fault that Boyle pasted a green globule of snot in the faucet and that I shouldn't have punched him in the face.

I said to her, "Well, he shouldn't have put himself in that position" which was brilliant by the way.. only it was an hour later on my way home after detention and under my breath a dozen times - wanted to fell like I had won.  

Once again I managed to make a fool of myself and moseyed home like a defeated dog with his tail between his legs, but after a couple rounds of my pretend shouting match with the Catholic nun that looked like Sergeant Shultz (on Hogans Heros) my whistling returned as I rounded the corner by the burned down Fraternity House. I was looking forward to playing with Tommy or Jeffery or Dennis - just anything that would keep me away from alligators, from electricity, from hampers and pits and arrows and BB guns and ropes and the WOLF PACK!  I had already been through enough humiliation for one day and didn't need any more torture from my older brothers.  I wanted to be anywhere, but home and needed to avoid my family at all cost.

With a spring in my step...and a little too happy...in light of the disastrous events of the day... I gladly withdrew into my mental illness - if that's what it is - daydreamed and sang the Beatles "All my Loving" totally oblivious to the ambush that awaited me behind Frank Nargie's behemoth Plymouth.

     
all my loving