Baby Jesus and the Veloci-Raptor

(Continued...from Who stold Baby Jesus? )

Footsteps pounding
Adrenalin pumping through my veins
Unbeknownst to me, my drug addiction Drug Addiction was being satisfied - thanks to my fear of the Wolf Pack heading up the stairs as if the angry mob with pitch forks and torches who were after Frankenstein.

They were coming for me: Fight or Flight!

I was trapped in my room - and I knew that if they got through my door- it would be me in a losing brawl against 12 stoned hippies that would likely end in some elaborate form of torture that could involve electricity and a pool or ropes and a straitjacket.

There was no good ending to this!

My mind rushed - knowing that this could be my last Christmas, yet I also possessed the secret knowing that I had some kind of power that gave me superhuman strength to survive whatever torture they could dish out and live through it...(I had the Joseph dream and it worked at Salton Sea).

Hair standing up on the back of my neck and goosebumps on my goosebumps... Frantically, I had to come up with a plan.

Our house had old door handles that had been equipped with ancient skeleton keys back at the turn of the century when the old Victorian was built. The keys had all been lost for like a bazillion years and none of the doors in our house had locks that worked (except my mom's door - which had eight locks installed so mom could keep herself safely locked inside away from the mayhem when we were trying to kill each other - smart mom).

I stuck a chair under the door handle...to buy some time, grabbed baby Jesus and stuffed clothes under my covers in the shape of a 13-year-old...to fake them out; if only for a minute. With the sound of furious fist pounding on the door I quietly, climbed into the sun room, over the junk and out one of the front windows. Inching my way along the bottom trim of the windows I came to the end and leaped off onto the carport roof just as the gang of vindictive hippies burst into my room...chanting my name in a monotone drone like cannibals under some hypnotic spell who were about to put their victim in a giant stew pot.  



It did take long for the brood to discovered they had been duped by the dummy under the covers when one of them spotted the open window.

Unfortunately, none of them chased me out the window - I knew I would have lost a couple of them that way. "Shucks!" Instead, they turned and hastily descended the chairs as mom yelled from her room, "Under pain of mortal sin!"    No one listened!  No one ever listens.


On top of the carport roof... I was faced with a life or death decision, "front or backyard?"  A voice said, "backyard" it might have been the plaster baby Jesus speaking?!  I don't know! None-the-less, that's the way I chose to go. Quickly, I scampered back and leaped onto a stack of decrepit cardboard boxes full of moldy stinky old National Geographics. The boxes I cursed so many times, broke my fall and I found my self face to face with the Veloci-Raptor.  I didn't have time to pull out my "Saint Francis, positive-pheromones, love-for-animals" - thing that I did. But the attack rooster softened its crazy eyes as though it pitied me and allowed me a free ticket to pass go and collect $200 (not really $200, that's in Monopoly - but you get the metaphor).



I took baby Jesus and climbed into the thickest part of the secret cannabis forest that my hippie brothers told my parents were "Mexican tomato plants."  To tell you the truth, I don't think they were tomato plants of any kind - they never did grow tomatoes and the plants smelled like skunk! Gross! I buried myself like a rat in the thick growth with my baby Jesus and watched as the Wolf Pack came out the back door as if hunting down a wounded gazelle.  Jesus and I were trapped and I tried not to breath. As the angry mob weaved past some leaning boxes of National Geographics, by the old tear-drop trailer with flat tires and by an old outboard motor they headed right in my direction as if they had smelled me.

The cunning Veloci-rooster stood directly in their path.  I looked at Jesus and shrugged. The raptor flung itself on the pack of hippies and began piercing the flesh of the long-haired hippies with its 4-inch razor sharp talons. The older boys began screaming like a bunch of junior-high girls as they stumbled over each other trying to make it back into the house where they would be safe.



Giggling from inside the marijuana plants, I winked at baby Jesus and mocked the tribe of would-be trouble-makers by mimicking the words of my eight grade homeroom teacher, Sister Schultz,  "You shouldn't have put yourself in that position." (of course that conversation was all in my head).  Feeling like I was my brother Bob who was in Vietnam and making my way through a hostile jungle, Baby Jesus and I made it to the tear-drop trailer where we spent the night.




I took the bloody rooster-attack on the herb-smoking Wolf Pack as a good sign. I know that normal kids in regular families didn't have to go through any of this crazy stuff - Not Tommy Blaser...Not Kippy Lennon... Not Ricky Tripp, but I felt lucky in a way... Weird right?  I felt blessed to be forged in the furnish of fire that would shape me for whatever destiny that lies ahead for me as if every incident of sibling torture as a milestone that help me learn about me and the crazy world in which I lived.



I looked at the plaster cast of Jesus and said, "Well, it looks like it's gonna be a good Christmas after all. And with your help Jesus, I'll make it to celebrate the 1970 New Year."


Like Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, I had a dream and that dream will keep me going!


                          Happy New Year!  

Hygiene and the Psychotic Hot Mess

At three hundred and some-odd pounds I couldn't blame Pinky for not wanting to take a bath; he was too big for the bathtub and he didn't want to touch his feet the moldy mushroom stuff we were growing at the bottom of our shower. Besides that, the bathroom door to the shower on the second floor didn't close all the way and there was a small opening that anyone could peer into - if they decided to invade his privacy. Pinky wasn't about to let anyone see him naked - in all of his glory and was determined not to take a shower. The older boys had already tortured him mercilessly with horrible name-calling about his weight and wasn't about to give the Wolf Pack one more thing that they could make fun of him about. His simple hygiene regime was to douse himself in cheap Pick and Save cologne to overpower his odoriferous mass. I was at least glad to have some help and tried my 13-year-old best to be kind to Pinky.


For me, hygiene became a psychotic game of epic proportions. I quit taking baths since the Alligator incident i.e. the Reptile Dysfunction , and as a 13-year-old boy desperately waiting for puberty to set in, I was deathly afraid of being caught naked in the shower by my callous older brothers. Even greater than the fear of being spied on by a member of the wily Wolf Pack was the fear that they would try to humiliate me by dragging me outside naked... or tying me to a tree or shoving me back into that Hamper naked and intentionally leaving under a random car to be discovered by a neighbor.   NO WAY!

I wouldn't put it past any of them and was desperately terrified. I had to strategically pick my moments, when no one was home and the times I thought it was safe to use the shower in the same bathroom that had the broken door.

I don't exactly know why my brothers felt that the baby brother had to be ridiculed, made fun of...or tormented to no end? I do believe the dark, spiritual matter of the universe (i.e the Ouija Board and the Paranormal Ooze) had something to do with it. I think that same invisible substance was like a pandemic plague that was the cause of hate and racism and bullying of any kind. Though, I might like to say things like "it was us who opened the portal to the underworld with our seances" this darkness had already existed and was everywhere!

I liked everything about my family, the loudness, the fun, the craziness - all of it.. it was the dysfunction that made us so special with which we derived our identity as much as we did from our Viking heritage. My dad was funny and my Mom even dressed up like Phyllis Diller and did a comedy routine at Saint Marks every year.

As I said before, my house being exactly in the middle of our block on Harding Avenue was the perfect metaphor for our family being the center of all the hippie craziness that existed in the universe- this part I liked! I like the fun and laughter. I had a bunch of great stories that not many other people on the planet could even begin to relate to... like, letting monkeys out of the zoo.. illegal trailer rides... high-speed police chases... the veloci-rooster... electrocutions... Milk Wars... alligator wrestling... rattlesnake escapes... Albino hikes... Ouija board and secret room discovery... and our UFO Madness where we nearly burned down the Lennon Sister's house at the corner!














I even had some Dahlin Pride about the MEXICAN TOMATO PLANTS that gave us celebrity renown in Venice.

The only thing I didn't like, was being made to feel like I was an outsider. I really don't think there was some evil conspiracy to make me feel like I was an expendable object at their disposal to be played with like a cheap child's toy.

It's just that all of my brothers were older and as they continued to evolved more and more into hippies - their world was a world in which I didn't fit. There was no coherent plan put into place to torture me or to make me feel like I didn't belong, it is just that at 13 - I didn't belong to their hippie, refer madness, draft card burning world yet. I was an outsider and at this point - the perpetual underdog.



One thing that I learned from these feelings of  being singled out and excluded was that everyone liked to be treated with some measure of kindness. I did. I didn't want to be punched with fist of fury but touched instead with tenderness and kindness...an occasional hug would be nice and some edifying words of encouragement -  welcomed.

Love!

I guess?

I never heard the word, but knew this lofty and evasive concept had to be true somewhere out there in the universe.

Even though I was a goof ball at school, I tried especially hard to treat the underdogs kindly (the kids who were easy targets for the bullies). I felt deep down inside my psychotic hot mess - that it was my duty to stick up for them - even at personal risk.


Being the perpetual underdog, I had a real soft spot for the those who were being treated poorly or unjust. Peter Parker's uncle told him that, "with great power comes great responsibility" and I knew that with my heightened justice sensors and fighting for "the least of these" could get me into trouble and often did (like the time I tried to protect Bill Gates from the Naked Zombies) and Harry from Terry's evil Prank).

Though I felt like a loner in a big family, I did not feel alone! I did not wallow in self-pity or in misery because of either my "retardation" (my brother's called it) -  or because I had this secret knowing that I was being prepared for a very special destiny. Somewhere deep inside I had this intrinsic knowing that I would find the meaning of love someday and that everything I was going through now was a part of the process in shaping me for that day!

There was no need to feel sorry for me - I figured that if evil could exist than so must the corresponding antithesis of perfect good!

I had a dream of a bright future!  In the meantime Wolf Pack do your worst - little do you know you are preparing me for an "extraordinary destiny!" Shushhhhhhh...this will be our secret!

Next time putting up the Christmas lights!  



 

Pubate Peons: The Dangeling Appendenge and Smell of Victory

(continued)...after sitting half-day next to Sister Edith and finishing the second half in solitary confinement next to Sister Schultz (for knocking out Terry in the school yard) a group of us ended up at the lawn between the Venice Police and Venice Fire Station.

Sister Schultz was nicknamed by the kids at Saint Mark's school  after Sergeant Schultz on the TV show Hogan's Heroes. The difference was that Sergeant Schultz on TV was a pushover who was always saying things like, "I see nothing. I know nothing" in order to stay out of trouble. NOT THIS NUN...She was the enforcer at Saint Marks and made everybody's business her business. To us kids, she was the second most fear human being in the world right behind the notorious Sister Godzilla.

Sister Schultz looked just like the German prison guard and behind her back all the kids would say, "I see nothzing...I know nothzing" in our best German accents - while being deathly afraid of getting caught. The guys figured that if you put Sister Schultz and Sergeant Schultz in a ring, the Catholic nun would pin the Nazi prison-camp guard and have him begging for mercy in less than a minute.  The eight grade boys started a rumor that she had been a professional wrestler (in men's competition) before she entered the Nunnery!

Anyway, back to the story. It was three O'Clock and the prison doors were open and we were free - in other words school was out.  A bunch of us headed over to a game of tackle at the lawn next to the Venice Police Station.




The hard part was dodging the land mines - dog poop!  This challenged my vomiting superpowers. As the smallest guy on the field, I was hard to catch...but eventually did get caught with the ball on the 10 yard line and managed to drag three older Venice High guys across the goal line for a touchdown. During the game I stepped in a warm pile of dog poop and vomited like a binge-drinker at 4:00 am in the morning. I couldn't take the stink anymore and invited the Saint Mark-ites over to my house for a game of "touch" in the street. I figured that since it was Friday and Irene (our house cleaning lady post 7/15/13) had spent the day clearing paths in the middle of debris, I thought it might be safe to invite friends over because the mountains of clutter had been leveled.      

MOST IMPORTANT - It was still early in the day and the herbal-smoking WOLF PACK have not had the chance to assemble in full force, therefore my friends would be reasonable safe from the terrorist attacks from my hippie older brothers. The last thing I needed was for one of them to be shoved in a hamper, put under a car, buried in a pit, dropped out of a window or electrocuted while flushing a toilet.

Along with Ralph and Dino and RC and Quarto and "Slow Harry" I recruited neighbors like, Tommy Blaser and Jeff Lennon to join us in the game in the middle of the soft, tar street on Harding Ave.  The teams were evenly matched and the score was tied, so we threw out the "Next Touch Down Wins" challenge.  Receiving the kickoff, we made it past the fifty yard line at the bumper of the Dahlin truck full of trash and earned a new first down.

Being so caught up in the game, I failed to notice that Ulrich and his crew of "Angry Little Men" had arrived back from Saint Monica's and had been sitting on the front stairs plotting something against me and my "pubate peons" (they called us).   Ulrich and his crew were a dangerous subgroup of the Wolf Pack and were not as creative as the older more Alpha members. Instead, his cronies were about as inventive as caveman and usually hid behind cars in ambush where they leaped out on smaller victims with fist and knuckles flying.

With three downs wasted, we had one more possession in order to score the winning touchdown. Although Tommy was younger than me he was a very good athlete and the quarterback drew up the play for him. At the snap of the ball and with the count of "alligators" on two, Tommy was covered like glue and I was free on the right side, running along the curb in front of the Blaser house.

RC threw the ball to me. I reached overhead and snagged it out of the air. Miracle - it actually stuck to my hands. I pulled it in and WHAM! Somehow my foot managed to catch something and down I went - face first on the ruff, greasy asphalt along the curb.

Trying to be as stealth as possible, the scheming Lilliputian villains pretended not to be paying any attention to us as they walked up the street in their covert plan to head to Rosie's liquor store. As planned, Ulrich had stuck his leg out and caught my foot!   By the time any of us looked up, he and his bunch of hoodlums were  already down the street.

Crack..went the sound of my bones when my right arm stuck the concrete curb that reshaped my dangling appendage into a grotesque "U" shape.  I guess the adrenaline shock had minimized the pain of the face-plant and the blunt force trauma. The first thing I thought was how lucky my team was that the ball was dead and Dino couldn't score on the fumble.

At first, I had no idea that anything was wrong. As usual, I was the the last one to figure it out. The angry little subgroup of the Wolf Pack ran away to the Kissel's house and it wasn't until I stood up to my feet that I realized that my arm was deformed into the shape of a pretzel. This was a bummer, I had just gotten the full use of my leg back and now my arm. Ughhhh! We were just a bunch of 7th graders and all of them too stupid to know what to do, so they left me there - in the street - with a broken U-shaped arm and scurried home like a bunch of frightened cockroaches when the light is turned on. Irene had already left for the day and Kurt had just gotten home.  He was sitting on the front steps by this time and as I approached from the Blaser's direction I screamed, "Hey, Kurt! I broke my arm!" in stoic, Viking non-emotional language that was instilled in our Dahlin DNA.

"Yeah, right" he said, sarcastically thinking I was pulling a seventh grade prank. Dad always said, "Swedes don't cry" and since there was no tears and carrying-on like a normal kid with a broken arm - Kurt didn't believe me, until I had gotten close enough for him to see the roller-coaster shaped appendage.

The Saint Monica record-breaking Water-Polo player, LA County Lifeguard and Eagle Scout - causally stood to his feet, tore the flap off of a cardboard box of decrepit National Geographic magazines that had cluttered our front porch and folded it lengthwise down the middle. He set my arm in it like a splint and tied twine around the bent thing that had been placed in the crud contraption.

"Go find mom" he said rather unceremoniously, then turned as if bored and went into the house in search of alfalfa sprouts and other hippie food.
(Before cellphones, and before 911, this was not such an easy task - but at least on this occasion, I wasn't going to die like last time (Post 11/29/13).

My white uniform shirt was full of grease, mixed with blood from the a fresh flow that dripped down from the cut over my right eye. It looked worse than it really was - but with the blood and the cardboard splint and the grease, I was a sight to behold.

I went from house to house looking for mom. Blasers. Tripps. Nargies.


I went to the Lennons knowing that mom probably wouldn't be there, but having a little bit of Viking terrorist in me, I was hoping to gross them out. It was devilish, I know, but it worked. Panic ensued when Dick Gas and DeeDee Lennon saw me, but I also have admit, it felt good to think that someone cared. On the way out, I said "Hi" to the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in their front window and headed towards Saint Mark's school.  I waved Hi to the Smiths and to the Gillemots on the way and thought I would try the convent (where the nuns lived) next. I really didn't think mom would be there either, but figured that I could get a little payback on some of the Catholic Sisters and hoped to freak them out like I did when I showed up at their front door as "Spawn of Charles Mason" on Halloween (10/28/13).



The adrenaline was wearing off and my arm had began to throb in excruciating pain. Going from door to door in a bloody, grease-stained shirt with a twisted limb in piece of cardboard was just about the most pathetic picture in the history of the Venice California...NO!...in the History of the world. I looked worst than the "pagan kids" we collected money for in the plastic loafs of bread handed out to us in class.  I felt like that little bird in the book, "Are You My Mother"...... only the little lost bird, didn't have a broken wing and wasn't covered in blood.

Oh well, I found mom later that evening and the poor thing took yet ANOTHER trip to Saint John's emergency hospital. When I arrived home later that night with my arm in a cast the Wolf Pack made fun of me. I may have been down, but I wasn't out.  I thought about putting the alligator we had in the backyard in their room, but I already had one wrestling match with that aquatic dinosaur and didn't want to go through that craziness again. Instead, in the middle of the night, I decided to sneak quietly upstairs to the third-floor abode of the Wolf Pack and slightly opened the cage of Iguana Del Diablo (8/1/13)

Wait for it! 

Wait for it! 

I was like a kid waiting for Santa Clause to arrive. I didn't sleep until I heard the screaming and panic of the Wolf Pack on the third floor as they wrestled with Del Diablo and with each other(that was the part).  I smiled, reveling in sweet revenge and fell sound asleep with this comforting thought,  "Victory...smells like the sounds of the Wolf Pack turning on each other."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 hehehehehe

I know I was the one with the broken arm, but I felt like I had won!