I Said Yes! Why?

       Why? Why did I say yes to her?

Where were we before I interrupted the story of Markie D for the long pause while I traveled to Malawi with Water Wells for Africa.

Oh, yeah—we took a side trip into the future for the harrowing but true life adventure of grownup Mark—who had to fight off an intruder and found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle in Paris. I reported that crazy incident, just to show that you can leave Venice, but can't take the Venice out of you.

Going back in time to 1970, the next 4 years at Saint Monica high school was not like a new invasion of Venice had suddenly spilled into Santa Monica—by no means. 

My grandmother taught at Saint Monicas and my older brothers had already carried the Venice virus into Santa Monica for about 10 years already! We had already loosed the infection into Santa Monica, Topanga, Ojai, Malibu, Ocean Park, Mar Vista, Culver City, Salton Sea, Kings River, Detroit, Idaho, Northern California and all parts between.  

September 1970.  The hippie hordes at my house subscribed to the doctrine of Antiestablishmentarianism, which means they boycotted and protested against any kind of political or adult authority—i.e. "The Man." The Vietnam war granted them permission to rebel against everything. 

This included oppressive parents (or parents they view as oppressive) who still believed in the antiquated rules for acceptable social behavior.  In March, John and Yoko Ono, had staged their "Bed-In For Peace" following the "Love-In" two years before that. 

NOW, everything was okay—Sex, drugs, Rock and Roll. I was still a little young for sex and drugs, but I loved my Rock and Roll, and felt sorry for my parents. I felt sorry that they were marginalized by the ones who felt had marginalized them and had empathy that their authority had been blatantly disregarded and disrespected. I was torn. I so desperately wanted to fit in with the "Wolf Pack" and was so willing to be tortured by them just to feel like I belonged, yet didn't want to totally give myself completely over to hating my parents.  

Okay, here is what I'm trying to say. I'm pretty much a looser and don't know what world I live in. Do I listen to the "Wolf Pack" brothers (who hate me) or do I listen to my mom which will make my brothers even more mad at me—inviting even more physical harm?

I felt like Uncle Fester (from The Munsters) as if I had a giant clamp on my head with my tiny brain stuck in the middle.

So, when mom says she went to Hensheys and bought me a new shirt for my first day of high school, I had empathy for her and said, "Yes." 

No one listened to her anymore and so I thought it was only right to show respect for her.                                                      
                                           Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid

Ugh. Against every impulse; against any chance of belonging (which I so desperately wanted), I said yes to the multi-colored shirt that had a zipper on the back collar. She thought it was cool and I didn't want to hurt her feelings even though I knew that I could be persecuted for showing up in it on my first day—in a shirt that wasn't even fit for a girl.  

I could put it on, wear it out of the house with a smile and take it off somewhere in between—she would never have to know.  I thought scheming up a plan.          

Dang it. I got caught leaving the house by a brother who laughed at me, pointed at the hideous shirt and called me a 'tard. 

My mocked "coat of many colors" had a turtle neck with a gold zipper - DOWN THE BACK!

Maybe Chewbacca was right. Maybe I was a bit retarded. Who would wear a shirt like this—after all it had a round, golden ring-thingy attached to the zipper-pull.  

    Nothing about this shirt made since to me.

I felt like John the Baptist—Again. 

(Here I am pictured to the right confused by a previous clothing malfunction - submitting the to fox stole and a bloody head on a paper plate).    

It turned out to be a blistering 80 degrees that day and I refused to take off my stolen Saint Mark's uniform sweater—a sweater that did not hide the collar and zipper from hell. 

AND WHY DID I CHOOSE TO wear this colorful plaid-shirt WITH PANTS that had colorful STRIPES. I looked like a dork from another planet. I deserved every bit of ridicule that I received that day.  

Putting her nose in the air, a senior girl came up to me and said, "Didn't anyone ever show you how to dress? Never put stripes and plaids together you dork." 

No I thought. No one ever took the time to talk fashion sense with me. My family only makes fun of me and me tells me I'm retarded.  I'm an orphan raised by the Wolf pack.  Idiot.    






















Our front yard










                                                Their front yard

Their backyard 










                              Our backyard

I said, "I'm wearing this shirt to make my mom happy. She feels bad about her parenting skills, because no one listens to her anymore. She wants to compare our family to the incredible Lennons who live across the street and is suffering an identity crisis of her own. So I am wearing this shirt—despite the criticism I know that I would receive today because of love. You're so stupid" I said. "Don't you know anything about kindness or about love?" 

There I did it. She spun on her heal and walked away.  

I'm 14. It's my first day of high school. I am a freshmen dork cornered by a beautiful, stuck-up, senior girl—of course I didn't say those words (those words went through my head about three days later—actually about 3 weeks later—when I woke up in the middle of the night). 

The only thing that saved me so far was the kid from Saint Gerard's grammar school in Culver City who road his bike to school first day—in White Pants!  Kevin McCaffery hit an oil slick, skidded across the greasy asphalt and continued to slip across a patch of grass. Poor kid dressed to impress but looked nearly as bad as I did. He took some of the attention off of me. Thank you Kevin for crashing your bike and wearing "The Pants of Many Colors." 

Listen, I had been in love with Andrea since 5th grade and haven't had the courage so far to look into her eyes and say anything about my feelings. She's probably going to give up on me. I don't blame her.  




I had about as much chance with the girls as Philip.                                                                                                                                                   Philip was one of the strays my mom took in who lived in one of the rooms on the third floor. 

This shirt all-but-sealed my fate with the ladies for the next four years of high school.







What was wrong with me? 

I hid out the best I could for most of the day and even skipped the meeting after school for everyone interested in playing water polo.   

I had to take the Big Blue Bus (the 3 Lincoln) all the way back to Venice, which would be crammed full of  mean high school kids. What was I to do?  How do I face the cool kids and the cute snob in her hush puppies and low-rider jeans. 


Epic fail, I forgot to bring the extra shirt.
I will either have to:
                                  kill myself
                                  mug an 11-year-old kid and steal the shirt of his back     
                                        or 
                                  hitchhike

All three were out—I didn't want to die—not yet. I wasn't going to rob a kid and I couldn't hitchhike with THIS STUPID SHIRT.  I was a doomed, "retarded" 14-year-old and it was only the first day of high school.  


I needed a new plan.  

I snuck into the janitors closet that was filled with brooms, with the smell of moldy mops and with a thousand rolls of toilet paper.  I skipped 6 period and began undressing. 

This was the only thing I could come up with. Unfortunately the door open at exactly the wrong time AND it wasn't the Janitor. 

Who was it?     Will Markie make it back to Venice with any sort of dignity at all? 

Next time. 


P.S. Even though this combination pictured above is terrible—this is not the shirt I was talking about (turn this shirt around backwards put a gold zipper on the back collar and you can pretty-much get the idea).                
      

The Hippie Fest in Tuna Canyon: pt 2 There are no Strings on Me

(continued)
Everyone was assembling on the front lawn of the Harding house.

Zit King and Chewbacca and Primo and Booty and Mad Dog and Flea Bait and Monkey Boy and Face and Chewy and Kleghorn and Herkamer and Lardo and about ten other guys and all the hippie girls who liked all the hippie boys who had been christened with mean-spirited nick-names.... AND ME!

One time everyone thought the earth was the center of the universe which was challenged when Galileo insisted that the earth was in orbit around the sun...BUT GALILEO was wrong. Once again, my house was the center of the universe.

And I was invited to step into that universe. For today, my older brothers called me by my real name.

I felt like Pinocchio - you know the wooden marionette who had seen enough hardship and been through enough adventure to finally go through the right of passage of becoming a "REAL BOY."

That was me.
                         AND

This was my initiation - my "right of passage" for belonging - my acceptance into the Wolf Pack, where I finally got the chance to metamorphose into a "Real Boy" and become part of my tribe.

"Hi-ho the me-ri-o...there are no strings on me"


Though I wasn't quite out of Saint Mark's grammar school, I was close to graduating and would be at Saint Monica's High School in the fall. Maybe they thought, I was close enough and had been through enough already to have earned my stripes so that I could join the brotherhood.  I had grown my hair as long as the nuns at Saint Mark's would allow and I could put my bangs in my mouth (that was a pretty big deal for Saint Marks).








I had finally quit using the "Sugar-Water-Gel" invention of my dad's that made me attract mosquitoes and that made me look like I had leprosy in the 6th grade (stiff sugar-water hair pictured below)

I wasn't sure that I was ready for all of this hippie stuff, but I at least willing to give myself over to considering this tree-hugging, Vietnam-war-protesting, draft-card-burning, antiestablishmentarianism "long-hair"enterprise of theirs.

Bodies jumped in to the front and into the truck bed of the Borrego (that's the 60' Ford plumbing truck - pictured to the right), into Chewbacca's 57 Ford, into Tom's 56 Chevy hot rod, into a couple VW beetles (that had to be push started - of course), into Kris' 63 Econoline van and a brightly colored VW van painted with flowers and giant peace symbols.

"Come on Mark. Come in this car with us"
"No, come with us Mark!"

They weren't fighting me. They were fighting over me...my stars were finally aligning (like that new song The Age of Aquarius by the 5th Dimension).

       Peace Harmony and Understanding

They wanted me to come! As I scrambled for the van that had the prettiest girls, Flea Bait yelled, "Oh, and don't forget the rope."  I was important... they wanted me and they gave me something to do.

This was bound to be the best day ever. (I was in charge of the rope. If only Andrea could see me now)!  I sat between Vicky and Judy and happily hummed Pinoccho's little ditty...to myself thinking how ironic it was that I was carrying the rope.

HA!

I may have had a large rope slung over my shoulder - but for today at least there were no stings on me.

I've got no strings

To hold me down

To make me fret, or make me frown

I had strings

But now I'm free

There are no strings on me

Hi-ho the me-ri-o

That's the only way to go

I want the world to know

Nothing ever worries me. 

Hi-ho the me-ri-o

I'm as happy as can be

I want the world to know

Nothing ever worries me.

I've got no strings

So I have fun

I'm not tied up to anyone

They've got strings

But you can see

There are no strings on me.  

Off to the hippie destination of choice in Malibu - TUNA CANYON...(shown above) and I was included.  After this adventure I would probably have to go to the Surprise Store in Culver City (the Army surplus store) and buy my own $2.00 pair of used jeans.  They liked me!    They chose me!   For I was becoming one of them.    

  

We parked at the turnout on a hairpin curve and piled out of the cars.

With a sense of importance, I happily carried the rope as we headed to the sacred place of hippie worship.

To be continued... Looking  back on this, I wondered if this is what Issac felt like when he marched up the hill with his dad, Abraham, tasked with the important job of carrying a stake of firewood?

Revenge of Chewbacca and the tattooed 13-year-old!

My older brother who looked like Chewbacca recently graduated from Santa Monica City College which granted him only more idle time. I don't know who said, "Idle hands are the Devil's workshop," but in the case of hippie older brothers this expression was certainly true - I had experience those unholy hands on too many occasions.  On the mornings he slept in (typically every morning - expect for the Wednesday and Thursday street cleaning torture  - which agitated him to no end)... I had one less obstacle of getting out the door in the morning and safely to Saint Mark's School. What I mean by "one less obstacle" was that I had one less older brother that I had to carefully navigated around - in order to escape unharmed.                               BUT NOT TODAY.

It was a new year (1970) and I prayed for normal! I had been praying for normal ever since the needle tipped arrows and the time I was left behind at Salton Sea. I was thirteen, still waiting for the stubborn hair to show up under my armpits and felt awkward among my classmates in the eight grade, like Ricky Arredondo, who had to shave the coveted peach fuzz on their upper lips.

I just didn't seem to fit; not in my family - and as a late bloomer not at school  - especially since I was the omega (baby) Dahlin boy and had been profiled because of the reputation of my older bothers that made the Nuns hate me and made me feel like everyone else was looking at me with raised eyebrows and sideways glances. On being Catholic





I wasn't a Blaser
I wasn't a Lennon
I wasn't one of those other normal, plain-wrapped kids who lived ordinary lives - I was a Dahlin!

My family was unique and I was special. Every time I walked out of a room I sensed that people were talking about me behind my back. I wanted to feel accepted and like I belonged and it seemed as though my older brothers (the WOLF PACK) knew that and were determined to make make sure that didn't happen.  I was on the outside looking in.

I'm not one who believes in conspiracy theories: I do believe we landed on the moon (6 months ago), that Paul McCartney was still very much alive, that tire companies didn't invent the expansion joints in concrete freeways to wear out tires faster or that the CIA killed President Kennedy - but sometimes I think my older brothers did conspired against me "To keep little brother down" at least it felt that way.

This morning was no different! It was January and the beginning of a new year...I had found clean socks and two shoes that matched. Somehow, in the cosmic order of things, I had been chosen as a select group of students from Saint Marks to attend Zero Period at Saint Monica's High School at O' dark-thirty-in-the-morning. I actually don't know why I was chosen or how someone figured that I qualified to be included in this smart group of kids who traveled each school-morning for advanced math (but I was...it made me nervous and now I had big expectations of high school level algebra to live up to). I had to at least pretend to be smart.  It felt good to feel like I finally belonged to something - even though it was a geek squad! I had to admit when I was just plain ordinary "White and Gold," a Swede with blonde hair I was kinda of cute - but that was the exception to the rule. Usually by the time I showed up to school I was black and blue - covered with all manner of bruises and Band Aids.

Terry Ballentine. Cathleen  Horamomto. David McLean. Smart kids, normal kids... and then there was me! On this particular Monday morning I don't know what Chewbacca was doing up so early - my hunch was that he never went to bed last night and was just making his way in from whatever party he was at. I don't know if our little encounter this morning was part of the "Wolf Pack Conspiracy" or if it was pay back that I had stolen Baby Jesus and managed to get away with it or that he was still upset that I tried to take him to school for show and tell.  In any case, I was a marked man (or a marked prepubescent-whatever-my-sister-called-me)... LITERALLY!

UGHhhhhhhh!

Chewbacca grabbed me from behind, picked me off my feet and squeezed all of the air out of me - cutting off the oxygen to my brain - rendering me unconscious. When I woke up, I quickly headed out the door door and hastily made my way to the waiting carpool of Saint Markian brainiacs. When I got to the car the other kids pointed and laughed (except for Cathleen - she cried! My Saint Mark's sweater was turned backwards and I had black-marker tattoos that covered my face like one of those Hells Angel "biker" guys who live down in the rough, run-down section of the Venice canals. Literally I was marked! In addition to the dripping flames - he drew little hairs on my chest and blacked out one of my teeth. I didn't have a good explanation for the mother who almost refused to let the little black and blue Swede into her car of hysterical 13-year-olds who wouldn't or couldn't stop laughing.  AT ME! Grrrrrrrrr


The only thing I knew, was that all the High School kids at Saint Monica's would see me and that eventually the rest of my classmates at Saint Mark's would think I belonged in the freak show in a circus.

The nun didn't know if she should let me into her class or not, but figured that since it was before homeroom she would take pity on me and let me in just this once with my demonic looking Tatt's - but she wasn't happy about it.

I met a kid named James Moore from Corpus Christi in the Palisades. He was the smartest kid in the class and wanted to write an algebraic word problem on how long it took Chewbacca to draw all over my body. "If Chewbacca began at the freckly mark as point A and drew a line all the way to the mosquito bite at point B and he drew another line from B to C and back to A around the ear and across the chest, which train would get to New York quicker and how long was Markie d on the floor before he woke up."   The kids laughed. It wasn't funny!


After class, when I boarded the "3 Lincoln" the bus driver squinted his eyes in serious scorn and asked me where I was headed - when I told him Venice Boulevard - he rolled his eyes, punched my ticket, reluctantly told me to get in and said "Venice, huh? It figures!"

I had bright expectations for 1970 and had hoped to get Andrea's attention.Only this was not the kind of attention I was looking for.



"Normal"
I prayed for normal but now sat quarantined in the back of the Big Blue Bus on my way back to Venice.

Maybe there really wasn't a conspiracy by the Wolf Pack...maybe they really didn't have secret meetings in the middle of the night to figure out ways of taking me down or trapping me in things like hampers or embarrassing me... if not - it just might be the conspiracy of human nature that makes us do bad things to one another.  I don't know if there any other explanation - the Ooze maybe- yes maybe it is the black sticky ooze we have all stepped into somehow and must find a way to escape.

Continued: Part 2 Back at Saint Marks

Childhood is the fiery furnace in which we are melted down to essentials and that essential shaped for good.                                                                   Katherine Anne Porter






 

Show and Tell and the Ebola Outbreak

(continued from last time) Sunday night before the big day at the Saint Marks eight grade "Show and Tell" I pulled out a paper and began brainstorming.
  
There had to be something from the insane zoo we had at our house that I could bring that would impress the love of my life:   Alligator too dangerous (already wrestled with the hideous beast that crawled out of the primordial swap of evolution)The 12-year-old and the Alligator

Grandpa the giant frog - too management intensive, needs slimy-green, mosquito-laden water - yuck (gagging thinking about it).
 Grandpa the Mutant Bullfrog






Fat Pinky:  NO. No. No. NO! It's not right.  He would know why I brought him and would probably sit on me (my brothers tried to keep him in the house as much as possible)









The monkey was my best option - until I remembered how it liked to fondle itself, and in a moment of clarity, figured I couldn't subject the kids to that kind of graphic imagery involving boy parts.

Poochie the "The Wonder Dog" had been missing for 3 days and I was stuck! None of kids would be impressed by a brown beagle (even if I could find the missing companion) and none of our other animals were safe to go to a Catholic School. Iguana Del Diablo Escapes



I decided that I would try to get one of my 8 older hippie brothers to come with me to school tomorrow for Show and Tell.  The other kids had to love that..right?  Besides, I don't think any of them had ever seen a real hippie before...


Chewbacca was out of school and I thought maybe the other kids would like to see one "up close and personal," they could touch his hair and ask him questions about his eating and grooming habits.


YES! Brilliant...who would think of that! This would make me famous and Andrea would have to take notice of me for sure (as Chewbacca would say, "Like..it's all copacetic...man." He used "man" and "like" as if they were punctuation marks.)

I asked, Chewbacca if he would like to come to school with me and after he caught me held me down and tortured me to death by tickling - I had to tell the truth. I told him it was for Show and Tell. And when he forced me to explain that it was because he was a hippie he squeezed my forehead and gave me a "template." Chewbacca and the Template Torture

I woke up from my unconscious state with nothing on but my chonies - and freaked out when I discovered that he and Ulrich had taken off my clothes and covered my entire body in red spots with a indelible red marker.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise - Now I had some communicable disease that would make it impossible for me to go to school - at least until after the Thanksgiving break!

I put my hand on a light bulb, faintly grabbed my mom's hand and barely managed to get out the name of my sickness - "chicken pox leprosy" and dramatically collapsed just after saying that I couldn't go to school in the morning.

She said, "You're Swedish...I don't want to hear your excuses! You're getting up and going to school in the morning"

This went from bad to very worst...I had no animal for Show and Tell... my body is covered in red spots from head to toe... AND mom is making me go to school! I THINK mom thought that I had painted myself like this and wanted me to suffer the consequences... UGGGHHHHHHhhhh!  She even quoted my eight grade teacher, Sister Schultz, "You shouldn't have put yourself in that position" double ugh!

That Monday morning I woke up early to take care of my "trash day" duties (because the lazy hippies sleep until noon) when the crazy monster from hell - the Veloci-Rooster, broke our agreement and attacked me on the way back from the alley to the house. Now I had five deep holes in my leg and was dripping with fresh blood. This was only getting better. I smeared the blood on my face and arms and tore off the leg of one of Ulrich's hand-me-down uniform pants. I looked like nothing you had ever seen before - A ZOMBIE. This was better than the "The Wolf Boy" 12 second preview of Wolf Boy 

I bandaged my head, picked up my old crutches from last year where I nearly died Markie's Death and pathetically hobbled to school with the fresh stream of blood running down from knee cap to sock- looking one of the "pagan-children" in an improvised country you gave money at church to sponsor.  I slowly passed by Sister Superior's office making sure to catch her attention... and I guessed it worked. She screamed, intercepted me, turned me around and said, "Where do you think you are going young man."

"To class" said I, in my best Tiny Tim impression..."despite this case of bleeding Ebola or fatal leprosy or whatever this is...." voice fading as though I could die at any minute - then pretended to try turn back as if I wanted to be in school.

"Over my dead body" she replied, emphatically planting her feet and hands firmly on hips - blocking my way taking a step back for fear of making physical contact with me... "Go home!" she demanded pointing out the door like I was a rabid dog.

"I can't. I need a note from my mother!" I said with puppy dog eyes as though I was always this obedient.

"Leave this instant and I'll talk to your mother!"


Thank you Chewbacca
Thank you Veloci-Rooster
Thank you Sister Superior

I got to skip school and didn't have to show up for the stupid Show and Tell... Hallelujah! Her expulsion saved me from embarrassment of being seen with red dots.

Maybe I still had a chance with Andrea.

Maybe I still had a chance to find out what this thing called love was all about.

Like the dude that was healed by Jesus in the gospels...I picked up my crutches and ran.

Bringing a Hippie for "Show and Tell"

When I talk about the Mutant Zoo, I'm not talking metaphorically about the long-haired hippies up on the third floor of our house. I'm  literally talking about the eclectic collection of animals that we have assembled over the years through hook and by crook.








We had to do a "show and tell" for the new eight grade class over at Saint Marks and I was creating an inventory list of possibilities for me to bring to school next week. As I scratched things down on a list that filled two sheets of paper, I realized (AGAIN) how far out of the ordinary we were.

  
While most normal families in America had a dog or a cat or gold fish for a pet, we had enough animals to rival the Santa Barbara Zoo, only most of their animals were in cages and visitors there were safe. The first animal on the very top of my list was an alligator...an alligator that liked to eat little kids. I could show off the sharp-toothed prehistoric creature and tell about the time I had to wrestle it in the bathtub Alligator Wrestling, but felt that there was a possibility of  things going terribly wrong. I thought that I could get Andrea's attention but figured that if four eighth-graders got mauled to death that would be the wrong kind of attention.

In the ivy next to the pond in a Styrofoam saucer was the giant bullfrog named, "Grandpa" the size of a small dog that could swallow baby chickens or rats whole as if they were crickets. That might work...maybe I could feed one of our baby chickens to the antediluvian creature in front of the class- surely that would be a hit. Wouldn't it?

Next was the soft-shelled snapping turtle that loved to latch on to fingers like Pinky liked to gulp down Vienna hot dogs - neither was a good visual.                 (Pinky Pictured to the right)

Next to the chicken coop with the 23 stinky hens and the crazy attack Veloci-Rooster that thought it ruled the world as if it were Godzilla himself  Hell has no Fury. That wouldn't work because it had already had a reputation of attacking one of the nuns after which a priest had come over and tried to preform an exorcism.
                                 Score: Rooster 2 vs. Clergy 0


We had 42 guinea pigs; rabbits too numerous to count, and a bunch of hole-digging tortoises that had been dropped off by some zoo somewhere. I don't know exactly where they came from - that's the story I was told, but to tell you the truth - I wouldn't be surprised if they were stolen. "Sheeze- hippies and their kindred spirits - I tell ya?

Moving indoors we had the notorious spider monkey that should have been mandated to wear pants because it sat on the fireplace mantle proudly dangling his boy parts in front of God - everyone else.










1)The monkey was just plain GROSS! 2)It was very embarrassing for a boy my age to be showing off genitalia like that...(even though I'm sure the girls may have been thrilled)... and 3)I'm pretty positive that the nuns would have had a heart attack.

Next was Lazarus, the burned cat, that had been resurrected from the dead after the Fraternity fire Miracle, After the Fire . One of my older brothers, Chewbacca, allowed the crusty feline to walk on the counter tops claiming that the nasty looking thing had the right to because it was a miracle. The scaly feline roamed freely and ate from open tubs of margarine and any other food that had been left out, leaving a trail of burnt skin flakes in its path. GROSS! GROSS!  I wanted to take the thing under the pretenses of the "show and tell" and lose it somewhere along the way, but Chewbacca would probably kill me.




    (picture of mom combing one of by older brother's hair)

I'm not even close to being finished yet! Even worst than the grodie cat - was Johnny, the one-eyed pigeon that lived on top of the refrigerator. The bird was like frigate carrier for parasites that took refuge under its feathers that you could see scuttle back and forth from time to time. It pooped...indiscriminately and tried to attack your head.

In the dining room we had a television set that  had been gutted and turned into a lizard terrarium that my tree-hugging brothers were very proud of that contained chuckwallas Chuckwalla Escape, desert geckos and leopard lizards that we had brought home from Salton Sea.

In the entry we had the foul mouthed Mynah-bird that my mom said swore like a drunken sailor. I actually thought about that one but knew I would have been kicked out of catholic school (I had already been decommissioned as an altar boy for throwing up on Father Scott - still shaking my head - Not a Good Thing.


On the third floor we had Iguana Del Diablo Day of the Iguana, three rattlesnakes, two king snakes, a couple garter-snakes and mice that we bred for feeding all of the snakes and lizards.







Never mind the million mosquitoes and the 10 billion fleas that was also a part of our collection, I bet Cheryl Arnold, the beauty queen, who lived directly behind us didn't have an menagerie like ours.

Like normal people, the Blasers next door to us, just had a dog - ONE DOG - that's it; a beautiful collie named Ginger that looked just like lassie. Ginger got washed and had a regular regime of hair-brushing and was fully trained to poop outdoors.





Heck the Lennons on the corner -didn't even have one pet.. not a dog... not even a gold fish!

At least we had a dog... a beagle, affectionately known as "Wonder Dog."








Maybe we were more normal than the Lennons........?


Naw....  I thought, maybe I'd just bring an older brother to school and talk about what it was like to have one of these things called hippies sharing space in your house.



"What is normal?" I figured I could talk about the care.. the feeding (minus the part about the marijuana plants) and share about the grooming habits (or the lack thereof) of these strange creatures...that had evolved over the last couple years Evolution of the Dahlins.

     (picture of my older brothers to the right)



"Hey, Chewbacca, do you want to go with me to school on Monday?"


Chewbacca sensed my sarcasm, bellowed and chased me down the hall!

It was the invisible Ooze - I tell you. It had gotten a hold of both of us... maybe this was the new normal...but  look at all the fun I got to have that regular people missed out on!