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!

Cloakroom Caper Disaster pt 2

Okay! So, I'd have to admit that it would be kind-of-weird to find some kid (in a hand-me-down Catholic school uniform with with blood stains on the collar) wriggling on the ground in the middle of an empty hallway. I guess, what I had to realized is that Marilyn might not have been the one with the problem in this scenario. Anyway, I do think I sold the bit about how I was rehearsing my role as a shepherd, rolling around on the ground in abject fear of those celestial visitors (continued from last Blog Post).

Hopefully, she wouldn't tell all the girls at recess. I already  felt like a dirty Zombie walking among the living and didn't need any more problems than I already had. Rick Arredondo already had a mustache and I figured that I was probably about 12 years away from puberty... judging by the amount of hair in my arm pits(or lack of hair). I just didn't have a whole lot going for me and I wanted to believe that I had a chance with the ladies...one in particular.

I needed to escape school because the squealing from Sister Edith's music lesson was destined to kill me. I looked down and saw the blood on the collar of my shirt and had to feel around
my ears to make sure they weren't bleeding.  That's when I remembered that the blood was left over from the arrows I had been shot with, which my brothers had made by taping sewing needles to the tips of old bamboo they cannibalized from the curtains in the attic.


That was a relief!  Not the arrow part, but the part where my ears weren't bleeding.

I really did think about going back to the infirmary, after all those years, and assuming the "stick-bug-of-ultimate-humiliation" position - when the flash of brilliance flooded my little gray cells. "If you can't beat them, join them." I reasoned and thought about a way of bringing down the entire class. There was only one problem though...it involved the cloakroom.

Regular kids had their Snoopy and Star Trek and their cool Flying-Nun lunch boxes and brown paper bags that their mothers had packed for their lunches. You know that that meant? It meant that I would have to endure the awful smell of Liverwurst, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and smooshed bologna that had begun to ooze with bacteria - mixed together with the smell of all those kid's school sweaters and B.O. from the boys who sweated at recess, which made those "cloak-rooms" smell like the Hyperion sewage plant in El Segundo.

 "Ewww and double gross!"  

I don't even know why this thing was called a cloakroom anyway. Who wears stinking cloaks anymore? Wasn't that something people wore back at the time of Jesus. Didn't he say something about giving someone your cloak also, when that someone asked for your coat..."Gross!" that meant a cloak was like someone's underclothes...

Geezers, my brain was already on overload before thinking about the groady underwear of 12-year-olds.

The way I looked at it, the nuns probably called those coat-closets - "cloakrooms" because many of the nuns at Saint Marks were around at the time of Jesus. I mean Sister Edith probably helped 'O Mary change the diapers of baby Jesus some 2000 years ago.  She looked that old - not joking.  

Anyway, the ceiling in the classroom was very high and the cloakroom wall behind Sister's Edith's desk didn't go all the way to the top. And there I was in the "pooh-pooh recycling plant" squeezed between the lunches and the sweaters in the cloakroom BEHIND Sister Edith who was yelling "head - tones" at the squeaky mice that had forced the dogs in the neighborhood to commit Hari-Kari and drove old man Snyder criminally insane.

I climbed on up on the hook that held Terry Ballentine's sweater and towered invisibly over the top of Sister Edith.  Without her being aware of my presence, I mimicked her every move.

"Head tones"  I mouthed behind her back lifting my free hand over my head like she was doing with both of hers.

This got everyone's attention...as they were suddenly alert and looking forward to the clown doing his act behind the ambitious nun.

Sister Edith thought she had a miraculous breakthrough with the apathetic 7th graders. She was Julie Andrews (every nun's dream)! By golly, she would lead these squeaking mice in a rendition of  "Doe, Ray, Me, Fall... female dears...rays of sunshine... and names we call ourselves..." She did it! She had finally gotten through to her listless students as if stardust was falling from heaven itself.

Soon laughter broke out!  I had an audience and they loved me! I was a hero and had my own stage where people seemed to liked me. This time I wouldn't have to share the stage with Ulrich like I did at the Zoo when he took over and dance on the edge of the cage before falling in (Blog Post April 29, 2013).

No. Instead, this was all me.

As it turned out, according to plan, it wasn't heavenly stardust after all, but a curse Sister began to think as the laughter swelled and she began to lose control of the class.  I was doing a good thing by saving the all the dogs within a 2 mile radius and possible changing Mr. Synder's darkened heart.  I had disrupted the singing which was the best possible thing at this moment in history! This was almost better than getting Soviet missiles out of Cuba.  This just could be one of the miracles I might be remembered for...when my name comes up for sainthood.

As Sister swung around wildly to look behind her, I stooped behind the half-wall and hid out of sight. She continued again and I popped up and continued to mimic her - which brought the class to its knees in laughter.

Think of the dogs I'm saving...think of poor 'O Mr. Synder - there is hope for him, because of this. Why, I'll be right up there with Saint Nickolaus and Saint Christopher.

She turned around again - I ducked and now the "cat and mouse" game made this entire performance even funnier as I popped up and down like a prairie dog with impeccable timing behind her back.

Yes... I brought the torturous singing to an end  - everyone was delighted except Sister Edith and Anthony and I did not have to make a trip to the dreaded infirmary.  Laughter with tears...UNTIL.

Until... my foot slipped and I fell to the floor of the cloakroom and bonked my head. Unconscious, a couple of the sweaty, bigger-boys dragged my body out from behind the wall and when Sister realized what had happened... she began to throw her chalk erasers at me -as usual. And boy let me tell you... the Dodgers should have signed her up... because she had a right arm that could strike out Pete Rose! 

Anyway, she sent me off to the infirmary and guess who was working? Yep! Mrs. Putziger. Dismayed and dazed, she didn't even wait until my two escorts left until she demanded that I grab my ankles and made me assume the "Stink-bug-of-ultimate-humiliation" position...

...whack slapped the stick from Sister Superior on my stretched out rump.  

Oh well...I guess it was all worth it, because the music stopped - dogs lived and Mr. Synder could now find kindness buried somewhere deep inside. 

God bless us all every one!