Peanut Butter and Unrequited Love...UGHHHhhhh!

Picture of my 4th or 5th or 6th oldest brother (depending one who gets counted into the mix), but this picture says it all. 

This just happens to be taken in the exact location we almost lost Kurt to the paddle-board-over-the-falls and the botched-rope-around-the-neck-rescue!  

As I said last time, I prayed for normal - but with the alligator, the attack rooster, the monkeys at the Zoo, the resurrected cat, with Iguana Del Diablo, the rattlesnake escapes, the Ouija board and the crop of well taken care of "Mexican Tomato Plants" anything to do with normal was well behind us. I always thought that normal lived next door to us or across the street at the Lennon Sister's house.  

As Catholics we weren't allowed to say the "Damn" word in our family. The Blasers next door were forbidden to say, "Darn it." Darn was just too close to "damn" and would count as a venial sin that could add to your purgatory time.  Being all grown up at 13, I dipped my toes into the shallow waters of Venial sin and said "Darn it" a couple times in front of Tommy Blaser, Kippy Lennon and Jeffery Lennon just to show them that I was older and more mature. On three occasions, I said the "Darn" word while thinking "Damn" in my head and wondered what my penance would be at my next confession.  I was a sinner!

 us - irregular

Them  - normal 

Us -  in front of our house

Them - in front of their house  

(continued) The morning I got back to Saint Mark's grammar school from the zero period for advanced math at Saint Monica High School -  wouldn't you know it, but the very first person I bumped into was Andrea!         Literally. I literally ran into her like a car wreck.

I think Marilyn Jones or Theresa Modesti pushed her into me - because they had been trying to set us up (that's how you do it when you're 13-years-old). I wasn't upset about running into her... as a matter of fact I liked how it felt to actually come into contact with a member of the opposite sex - who just so happened to be my - one "true love."  "Ah honey you are my candy girl"   This could have been good news on any other occasion...well, on any other occasion that I wasn't tattooed like a circus freak. "Darn" slipped out of my lips in the middle of our CATHOLIC school... what people didn't know, was that I was so mad at Chewbacca, that my brain - screamed that four letter word "Damn" inside! "DAMN IT...CHEWBACCA!" as anger and resentment filled my heart towards him.

Yes, I deserved to go to hell. I bent over to help Andrea with her books when I heard Sister Superior call my name. When I stood up and turned around in her direction - she screeched and called me into her office.

Charlie Brown once said, "Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter like unrequited love." Today my peanut butter would taste like gravel in my mouth. "Lord..." I offered up as she stood there and screamed at me for drawing the disgusting images all over my body "...normal, wouldn't be at all bad from time to time." I drifted off as she droned on about the Blessed Virgin Mary and others things I paid no attention to.

It was pretty embarrassing that she intentionally kept the door to her office wide open...so that the entire student body could hear her chew me out by name. I felt like she was the jury foreman rendering the verdict of guilty to be hung by the neck until dead in front of the entire school. I sat quietly and looked through her to the wall behind her...picturing...wondering...imagining the devious prank I intended to pull on Chewbacca as pay back. At the moment I couldn't think of anything better than a rattlesnake up his pant leg, but he had already survived that once before. NO, this time it would be more creative. He had it coming and I would have to tap into the evil ooze to get back at him for ruining my life and for the destroying the one shot I had at discovering what love really was.





While suspended from school, I intended on dreaming up ways of getting back at Chewbacca then eventually heading over to the Venice Police station to play football when the regular kids from Saint Marks and Venice High school got out.

After all this was the beginning a new decade - the beginning of the 70's and Hey, this was Venice - if you have ever been to Venice beach - you would know that with all my body art and tattoos - I would have fit right in!  

                                                                               Picture taken from the Venice Ocean Park Santa Monica 20^th Century Face book 

"Peaches Flowers and granola"   Good bye for now, I have to go eat my gravel, plan my revenge and hope Mrs. Blaser doesn't want to wash my mouth out with soap... my peanut butter gravel was bad enough.