Booby-Trapped between Hormones and Hope.

I was in Hensheys on the fifth floor. Hensheys in Santa Monica was upscale for those of us from Venice. Excited to be buying new clothes I was, “bouncing off the walls” according to my mom and all the other regular people in the store who were freaking out about the earthquake.

I wasn’t really there at all. I was back at Saint Monica’s thinking about the time I was cornered.

Darting from clothes-rack to clothes-rack, my  mind traveling back as if I was right there when Marilyn and Theresa cut me off and trapped me in the hallway. I felt like the wounded gazelle on one of those nature shows on TV.

“Well?” Marilyn said with hands firmly planted on her hips, in the way Sister Godzilla and the nuns did at Saint Marks every time I was in trouble.

I looked at Marilyn then to Theresa, then back to Marilyn, and did this a couple times before opening my mouth.

“Well…well…well what?” I asked with great trepidation. Not knowing what I was in trouble for, feeling like the girls were about to pounce on me and rip the flesh from by body.

This could be a problem. Not because Marilyn was about 9 feet taller than me or that she outweighed me by a good 50 pounds, but because we had two rules in our house.

Rule 1: Dad said that us boys were never…NEVER ever…EVER to hit one of our sisters i.e. girls.

Rule 2: I can’t remember what the second one was.

Anyway, I wasn’t really afraid that they could beat me up, after all I had taken on members of the Wolf Pack more than twice my size before. I was more afraid that if war broke out between us I would have to let them beat me up and was also afraid for them if my crazy-psychotic adrenaline stuff kicked in ( I didn't want to go to prison). It was a Game of Thrones. Who was in charge here? Definitely not me.

Trapped.

With pupils pinpointed they waited for my answer and held their ground, blocking any chance I had of escape.

I had no idea what they were talking about. I felt like I was in History or Latin class—nothing my teachers said made any sense to me.

“What’s wrong with you?” one of them said demanding an answer.

You know that proverbial “Deer in the headlights of an oncoming car” look. That was me. The same look I give my teachers whenever they asked me a question in class.

      Today would probably not be a good day.

I opened my mouth. No words. What do I tell them?

There were a lot of things wrong with me—duh!

Where do I start?  Do I tell them that I was tested to see if I was retarded? At least, that’s what my oldest brother said. He said that was the reason Aunt Mary had taken me up to Loyola University. Usually I didn’t believe him, but felt it had to be true because all of my other brothers agreed with him, when they laughed about it at the kitchen table.

“I’m retarded.”  I thought. No, that wasn’t the answer they were looking for.
“I’m hyper.” All the nuns at Saint Marks said so.

I ran down the list of all my faults, “I’m a robot,” “numb” “adrenaline junkie” “PTSD” “memory issues.”

I don’t think any of those explanations is what they were looking for. AND I certainly wasn’t about to share my deepest-darkest-secrets with anyone—EVER!  Fear. Shame.

Sighing, I shrugged, hoping they would give me a clue for this ambush.

“What’s wrong with you,” Theresa led off with again followed with, “why didn’t you do anything?”

While processing the words, “Do anything” Marilyn jumped in. “Yeah. Why didn’t you go after her?”

Stunned and having no idea what these crazy girls were talking about, I stared as the oncoming car came speeding toward me. This was not like Marilyn and Theresa, they were my friends—I didn't understand.

(Marilyn pictured to the right)

“Andrea!” blurted Theresa like an erupting volcano that couldn’t hold back the pressure anymore.

My brain was processing—slow—too slow. “Andrea?”

“Why didn’t go after her?” Marilyn said looking down at me.

Blank stare…processing…processing…This was like Brother Coleman asking me to translate some Latin. Omnes viae Romam ducunt—I didn't have a clue, it was like a foreign language to me.

The building shook. People panicked and screamed. I didn’t know. I wasn’t there. I was still back in that corner being interrogated by the hungry cheetahs.

“Well?” Theresa said trying that line of questioning again.

Three words squeezed out as I stared up past the boobs, which were at eye level and distracting (the advantage and disadvantages of being short), “Go after her?”

“Yes,” Marilyn said frustrated.

Like magma flowing down the side of the agitated volcano, “That whole thing in the school yard,” Theresa said, “was for you.”

“The whole thing?” I carefully asked more confused than ever. "Me?"

“When Andrea hugged that boy, over by gym...that was for you.”

“That was her cousin, stupid. She was trying to make you jealous.”

One thousand thoughts flooded my brain cells. HOPE! I felt like not all was lost because “someone liked me?”  Me?

The whole leg-lift and head-tilt thing Andrea did. The hug of 1971 was intended to make me jealous. I was jealous and hurt but now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get her phone number or how to approach a girl or what the next step is. “Ugh…I just wished these two girls would get their boobs out of my face and tell me what to do next”

Help me, I pleaded. I guess spoken words on my part would have been better. I am a looser, but a happy one because someone liked me.

Coming back to planet earth, I looked to see all the people in Hensheys clutching the floor and crammed in doorways. It was a big aftershock, but I had no idea that the old building had been violently swaying back and forth.

I calmly walked over to the cashiers table where a pile of red clothes were stacked up and asked what all the commotion was about.

Incredulously, three ladies stared at me as my Mother explained that we had just experienced another earthquake.

“What Earthquake?” I asked.

My mom laughed knowing that I had been totally oblivious. She knew that  it was because I had been moving more than the building and that I had probably disappeared into one of my out-of-body day-dreaming experiences. The others ladies joined in and soon everyone on the Fifth Floor was pointing at me and laughing. Fun on the Fifth Floor. It didn't matter—but it did.

On the way home, from the back seat of the car, I told my mom and Mrs. Exstromer that I really didn’t feel like the whole Europe thing was real yet—that’s why I was so calm.

“Calm!” my mother chortled from the driver’s seat, breaking out in laughter.

“Calm!” Mrs. Exstromer barely managed to get out after spraying her Tab cola all over the inside of the windshield when the two of them broke into a hysteria of laughter.

The two of them laughed so hard that mom couldn’t see because of the Tab cola and the tears in her eyes and had to pull the car over.

Gasping for breath like both of them could die of laughter, they volleyed the “calm” word back and forth between them.
(Pictured L-R Mom, Herb Williamson, Mrs. Blaser, and Mrs. Extromer. Mrs. Extromer was the Secretary for Saint Marks grammar school in Venice).

I sat in the back of a car in the parking lot of Kenny’s shoes watching the two ladies who I felt might have need medical attention at any moment.

Embarrassing…hello! This was the first time I had ever seen adults wet their pants.

Happens to the best of us, I guess. Oh well, at least with my new red Hang Ten shorts, and my red Hang Ten T-shirt, and my red Hang Ten socks I’ll be the best dressed kid in Germany. This had to be better than the stupid reverse turtleneck with the zipper on my first day of High School.

On the following Friday, my big, squishy, beautiful Irene, saw me dressed in my red Hang Ten "outfit" and said that it was probably better that I was going to wear this in Europe rather than in Watts, where she was from (I didn't know what she meant, but we both laughed).



Hormones were kicking in...being booby-trapped wasn't so bad... :)

Maybe not "Straight out of Venice."
Via Europam Amantissima ac spei plenus

Pictures Credit : Hensheys of Santa Monica posted on Facebook by Michael Hayashi; May 16, 2016 “You know you're from Santa Monica if”