Waking Up at the Pearly Gates

Three hours from the time I closed my eyes giving myself over to death I awakened on the other side.

HEAVEN! 

It had to be.


Next to me was the Veloci-Raptor (the one-eyed crazy attack rooster)  uncharacteristically cooing softly like a hen as though I was the baby chick under its maternal care.  Certainly the killer beast had been transformed as it must have made it way over the River Styx into heaven along with me.

The light was blinding and I expected to see Saint Peter granting me permission to enter the pearly gates.

It had to be heaven, for I was no longer trapped and buried in the dark igloo of death!

Pupils adjusting - Eyes focusing - I was both happy and sad to see the plain reality of my fate. A giant nutcracker, car parts, stacks of National Geographic magazines, old boats and a mound of collapsed construction blocks piled next to my body.

Sad  - that I was not in heaven.

Happy - to be alive.

I had been laid out on my back, face-up, eyes adjusting to the bright sun overhead.  This was my backyard and it certainly was not heaven by any stretch of the imagination.  The ropes were off of my hands and feet and I laid there with a daisy clutched in my fist - hands on my chest - as if prepared for burial. Looking past a couple old boats (that had collected water from the sprinkler) towards the window I saw "Lazarus," the miracle cat, staring at me!       

A SIGN!    I had escaped death!

This cat had cheated death and so did I.  "Cats had nine lives" goes the saying, and as I figured it, I was at least on life number 11:  Salton Sea, The hamper, Sister Godzilla, the Templates, the Furnace, the Pool Electrocution, Milk Wars, Fish Sticks, Escaping rattlesnakes, Snapping Turtles, Prankster Presidents, Iguana Del Diablo, the Alligator, Jerry T. T. and the Flying Leap, Albino Camps, Area 51 and our Harding Ave Roswell event,  Third grade and Mrs Simpson, Jalapenos, The Kitchen Electrocutions, Two other burials...and the Severed leg at McIlliot's pool, of course - not all of those incidents meant literal death, but I should have died at least ten times already -
                              AND NOW I WAS ON LIFE -  NUMBER ELEVEN!   For sure!

I think that stupid cat was actually looking at me as an inspiration...believing that if I could escape death this many times (as a mere mortal), then maybe it had a couple more lives on reserve as well.

There was no one around and I don't know how I got out!



                       There were no parents

No Lennon Sisters (who lived down the street)

   


     No Mr. Nargie (the mailman across the street)

No Edna (the grouch next door)


No Jerry T.T.  (Thank heavens)


No Tommy (my bestest buddy ever)


No Jimmy ("the Slurper")




No Wolf Pack ( I think my older brothers and the hippie commies were all still in Tuna Canyon).






No one, I was completely alone!










This was a mystery that rivaled that of the Fraternity Fire!

The only thing I could come up with, was - "My Guardian Angel"   I don't know how many of these angels my family have already sent into early retirement or how many of those angels get "Hazard Pay" when assigned to the Dahlins as a member of God's elite special forces, but I'm sure they deserve every penny of their paycheck.

It was 1969 and the Pope may have decommissioned poor 'O Saint Christopher... but I was saved somehow - and was convinced it was a miracle!




I turned around, shook my fist triumphantly at the Igloo of Death and although becoming more and more numb inside - Less Human - More Robot -  I felt this deadening on the inside that had been cauterizing the soft tissue of my heart, was a way of protected me from being a victim.

Shaking off the dirt...  I ran over to Tommy's house as though none of this had ever happened!



Whistling on the way - I wondered how more escapes, how many more lives, how many more miracles, and how many more angels I would be entitled to (mom, sorry about the dangling preposition at the end, but for now, I'm done ...oops I mean... I'm finished)!  


Until next time... and I can guarantee there is a lot more to come!

part 4 The HAMPER OF DEATH: Valhalla and the epic Conclusion

It was Saturday and my dad was off selling real estate at the lucrative Salton Sea Resorts (that’s a sarcastic “twofer”–obviously both lucrative and resorts were a joke). He left the Wolf Pack home alone to terrorize the World.. okay not the world, but Venice.. Okay again, not Venice but the neighborhood….Okay again, again, not the entire neighborhood - just me and the angry grouch next door.  It’s what the boys victoriously claimed as a “Twofer.”

She had made it abundantly clear that none of the wild animals that lived in our house were to come within 15 feet of her pristine 55 Buick that had less than 9,000 miles on it - in the 10 years she owned it.

The older boys were always trying to pick on poor Edna and their most inventive forms of torture always seem to include me… Last time I left off with me being lured into a retired diaper pail turned hamper under the guise of being included in a game of Hide-N-Seek…after falling for the offer I squished my wiry little body into the conformity of the dreaded tin-coffin when Dooh-Dooh Pants quickly shut the lid and locked the latch. It was a dirty, rotten, mean, horrible, no-good-for-nothing trick, which means, that things were going exactly according to plan when the neighborhood tribe of cannibals locked me in the decroded old metal hamper and tossed me under the rear wheels of Edna’s precious Buick as if I was begin sacrificed to some pagan god.

Well, last time I described how I was being dragged under the differential of her behemoth Buick spraying a rooster tail of sparks from her parking spot all the way past the Blaser’s house!  NOT GOOD.  My skinny, little white Swedish fanny was getting char-broiled as the bucket of death was heating under the friction of metal against asphalt at 40 miles an hour. 

“HELP” I cried in terror knowing that neither me nor my burial urn could take much more heat… as Edna sped past the big pink house at the corner…

It was getting hot – too hot!

My oxygen was being used up - too quickly!

I was suffocating and knew I had only seconds until their plan would be complete until the Angel of Death would come and escort markie d from this world into Purgatory.  

I blacked out into momentary unconsciousness until I saw the white light. This was the end… (in the words of Fred Sanford, “I’m coming home Ethyl”)   up, up, up, I flew…

The only thing I didn’t know was that the journey across the River Styx was like a roller-coaster that had spun off its track. 

Up I flew tumbling end over end – somersaulting… none of the nuns at Saint Marks had prepared me for this… I had expected a white light and some angel music – the kind I hear at the Lennon house and certainly a smoother ride.  Maybe the reason this was such a violent passage to the other world was because this had nothing to do with heaven or hell or purgatory or limbo, BUT VALHALLA!

The Norse god Odin had chosen me for the “hall of the slain.” This majestic hall in Asgard was for those who died in combat. It couldn’t be any worse than Salton Sea…right? I couldn’t see anyway, so I closed my eyes, sucked in my final breath and decided to let the valkyries to carry me to my eternal home.  I would have preferred angels, but whatever.

 BAM

I landed in Valhalla with a giant thud and was flat on my back – semiconscious… looking at orange stars…pink hearts,  yellow moons, and green clovers…  hey wait a minute! That’s from the new Leprechaun cereal, the Blasers and Lennons got to eat… NOT US…we had Malt-O-Meal and Oatmeal with meal worms. Dad said the worms were extra protein…Viking food!

I was lying face up on the Leland’s lawn. Leland was the hot-rodder at the corner of Woodlawn who was like a complete outsider to Harding. Mr. Lennon had already shanked a golf ball at Leland's black hot rod for racing down the street... It seemed to work...but I wonder if my landing on an outsider's lawn meant something for me...was this a sign?

Turns out that when Edna made the right  turn at corner of Harding two of her wheels came off the ground dislodging my flaming casket which shot out and struck the curb across the street. The hinges by this time had turn molten red and melted off my tin pooh-pooh container of death.  When the baby-diaper-diarrhea-bucket struck the curb the impact flipped the can up that shot me out like an ejection seat of a fighter pilot. I was ejected into the wild blue yonder…spinning somersaulting.. head-over-heels 10 feet into the air and landed flat on my back.

Dooh-Dooh Pants yelled, “It’s alive” and the Viking brood and fellow Hardingites clapped and laughed hysterically like sneering wolves at their prey. Even though Dooh-Dooh Pants was relieved that he wouldn’t have to add another billion years to his Purgatory sentence…the rest of the hordes didn’t clap that I was alive…instead, they clapped for themselves at the perfect outcome of a brilliantly executed plan and were LAUGHING AT ME.

I was hurt and embarrassed and sad and mad! I wanted to be included…I wanted to feel accepted, but felt even more and more rejected by my family – alone. I felt like Mowgli the man-cub who had been abandoned to the jungle and was being raised by the wild animals... Was this a right of passage that formally cut me out as an outsider.  

I would not give them power over me. I stood to my feet like an ace Viet Nam Fighter Pilot… Proud…Tall...Brave...

They laughed and scattered…  I saluted as the President gave me a congressional medal of honor… music played in my head!  Who had the last laugh now? HUH?  I turned not to show my tears…

“Swedes don’t cry’” my dad said…and I was learning not to cry…just not now. “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” my dad said. I was getting stronger each and every day…thanks to the Wolf Pack and their nasty pranks. 

Yep… I was one of the few… the brave… a member of the elite green beret… I retreated down the alley and invisibly slinked into backyard past the veloci-rooster, past the alligator, past the prehistoric frog and made it to the hero’s retreat of my room and listened to the boys telling the story below and laughing.     

Yep, I was getting stronger and stronger!  The next time one of them pushed my buttons they would get punched in the face…Yes siree, even if it was one Lennon brothers…Yep, even if it was Billy Lennon who was completely innocent.  I knew he didn’t deserve it…but, BOY someone was bound to GET-IT!  Smack right out of the blue. I would cold-cock someone...anyone and then run. 

I salute you Markie D...you earned your silver wings and your medal of valor. Stand proud and tall and be brave.