If you have been with my blog
for a while you know that I came from a big family; mostly boys and in most part, completely out
of control. You can bet that every day was sure to be an event where someone ended up in
emergency room or we had a good story to tell – often both. If it ended up in the emergency room THEN, to the Wolf Pack - IT WAS A GOOD STORY.
Erick, Me and Tommy Blaser - see how I wasn't touching a fish.
My dad was a fisherman and so
were all my bothers – I wasn’t! Being the youngest boy, they just made me clean
the fish – and I grew up not liking the taste of fish. It was probably a
mental thing – like most of my problems… (i.e. my vomit superpowers).
We tormented each other – and pestered our poor neighbors. The house directly to the east of us, lived a
little old lady (and her husband that we only saw from time to time). I think everyone
has a neighbor like this in their neighborhood.
(On Bewitched - it was Gladys Kravitz).
( Behind St Marks - it was Mr. Schneider, - thanks Theresa)
Being the youngest boy I was
their first and favorite choice for all of their sinister and creative outlets. Don’t worry, I’m going to tell you some of
those stories about the times I was shocked in the pool, tied up and throw over cliffs
(come to think about it - I actually
invented bungee jumping... Well, actually my brothers invented it. I was just the guy on
the end of the rope they kept throwing over the cliffs on Tuna Canyon road in Malibu).
Besides me, their second victim
of choice was the little old lady next door.
She didn’t want us around her
car; she didn’t want us stepping on her lawn. Every single time a ball accidentally
went over onto her lawn…
SCREECH
went her screen door flying open, as this
ancient women would leap from the porch like an Olympic long jumper, grab the
ball with a triumphal look of utter disdain - staring down all the kids in the neighborhood.
We figured, she must have had
several hundred balls locked up somewhere in her house. They were mere children’s
toys, how could she do it?
So the WOLF PACK conspired to
get back at her for stealing all of balls that accidentally rolled onto her lawn over the years.
They got out a fishing pole
and tied one end to a whiffle ball. Then two brothers pretended to play catch
with it – one brother with his heels imperceptibly crossing the boundary of our
driveway - likely touching a blade of grass to get her attention.
This went on for several
minutes – a spy saw Edna looking through the screen and then the ball was "over-thrown"
and landed smack-dab in the middle of her front lawn. The LAWN OF THE
NEIGHBOR-BALL-THIEF.
In anticipation, the screen burst open and Edna
took a flying leap off the porch. Bending down to pick up the ball, she looked at the Wolf Pack with the Grinch's grin, but before she could clutch her prize, the ball mysteriously moved away. Creeping forward she bent down to steal away the elusive ball as it moved just out of reach again.
One brother was reeling in the ball with the fishing pole
and over and over she crept closer to our driveway. He kept reeling - she kept creeping and as he wound that line up on his little reel, she chased that ball until her toes crossed over onto our cement driveway. Horror struck, she looked up to see about 23
ornery kids all laughing at her.
We were ornery and cantankerous and so was the poor little old lady next door. (Now that I look back on it - we probably made her that way).
We have to be careful don't we? All of us could be resentful like the Wolf Pack and bitter like my neighbor. "Bitterness is the poison we drink hoping it will do harm to the other person."
As trite or cliché as it sounds... I guess the moral of the story is that we can stop drinking the poison, blaming others and solve lots problems by just trying to love someone more than ourselves.
CRAZY RIGHT?
But modern American psychology would have us think that it is always someone else's fault - when indeed we just might be surprised to find that we are the "architect of our own misery" if not at least participants.
