The Last Supper only with Jalapenos

I apologize that it has been about a million years since I have had a minute to sit down and write another post. It is just after Mother's Day, but I strongly urge that none of you moms read this latest post!

This was one of those very horrible pranks that was much more than just a practical joke. Instead, it was  more like something Jack Bauer would do on the TV show 24 to interrogate a terrorist. (I was reminded of this story by someone who had told me his firsthand eyewitness account, when I was last down in Southern California).

The only thing I can't be sure of is the exact date. I can get close, however, by the diligent investigative historical analysis of source criticism (I will pick the year 1963: 1. Because our pool had to be up and operational i.e before the alligator, before Veloci-rooster 2. It was during a period that the back patio was clean 3. The pool also must have been clean and not a greenish-mosquito breeding swamp - 4. It had to be after the time this person began hanging around, if he was an eyewitness... I'm feeling like a New Testament scholar or something like that).

Anyway, my parents were were throwing a big bash in the backyard that had been decorated in a Hawaiian theme for the neighbors (that's why it had to be before the crazy Veloci-Raptor-attack rooster). I remember the decorations of fishing nets, cork buoys and palm trees. Sorry for borrowing from the Queen's English, but it was a "hoity-toity" affair and us young kids were not allowed. They had a record player and an open bar and I spied on the event from a clandestine spot from my mother's bedroom window, which had the perfect view.

I know what a lot of you are thinking already, "Don't tell me that a member of the notorious Wolf Pack threw you out of the window?" NO!  It was worst than that - at least to an seven-year-old kid, it was!

This was the end of a bad year...our Catholic President had been assassinated - the Vietnam war was escalating and  Frank Sinatra Jr had just been kidnapped up by Lake Tahoe somewhere. The whole world was mad - maybe that explains this whole incident - maybe this wasn't my brother's fault - maybe something was just wrong with the world. Or maybe a couple of the older boys were mad that they couldn't come downstairs to the party and somehow figured they'd get back at my parents or perhaps it was that they could still be the center of attention, though locked far away in the proverbial "tower."

I was minding my own business, as I spied on my parent's party below, when I was jumped on and attacked by a couple brothers. I fought back, but couldn't take all three of them. Marvel comics had just come out with this new super hero person called Iron Man, and boy, do I wish I was made of steel, so I had a chance of fighting back and so that that my human exterior could have withstood their devious plot. But I wasn't, and my outside was made of skin instead like any regular 'O person and I couldn't fight them off.

Let's just put it this way - what happened next - ended the party when everyone... not just everyone at the party, but everyone in the entire neighborhood heard the painful and blood curdling screeching as though they had heard the death cry of 7-year-old succumbing to advanced interrogation at Quantanamo!

Helppppp!


 I'll finish this one tomorrow - but mommas, be warned and do not let the tender ears of your children hear this story or you just might risk the fact that they might be scarred for life...      

"Judas, do what you must do quickly"

   

Whose Brilliant Idea was this? Pit of Despair!

There is a crazy lady out there named Margaret Sanger who says that "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of it younger infant members is to kill it." I hope nobody listens to her. Buried in this pit with cinder-blocks going up around me, I pray that my tribe hadn't been listening to her gobbledygook - if they had, then surely this was the means for my family to lovingly downsize.

The amused hippy clan was sweating and moving and stacking as they continued to build this concrete block Igloo of Death around me.  The only consolation I had was knowing that the Veloci-Rooster could no longer peck out my eyes if they released it from the chicken coop - at least that I was spared from.  With the bandanna around my mouth I couldn't scream for help and being buried up to my neck in this pit, I was completely defenseless and helpless.  In the words of Lee Dorsey, "Lord, I'm just so tired. How long will this go on?"

Little did they know that I was taking names, for if they murdered me, I would come back as a ghost and haunt each one of them.  Where do people come up with ideas like this?  Where in the world did Joseph's brothers (Joseph was a younger brother of a large family in the bible - he was the guy with the coat of many colors)... where did they come up with the idea of putting baby brother in a pit, making him out to be dead and then selling him off to the "Salton Sea-ites" (I think it was Salton Sea-ites - it was some people group like that).  WHY?  

Did the evil inspiration for this come from smoking the leaves of those "Mexican Tomato Plants" in those funny shaped cigarettes. Was it jealously?  Anger? I didn't do anything to them. Was it a feeling of powerlessness and the need to feel powerful so the Wolf Pack had to pick on the weakling of the bunch to feel that way?
I don't know.

The Devil?
I don't know.

The heart?
I don't know.

Some kind of insecurity?
I don't know.

Mass hysteria?
I don't know.

Agent Orange?
I don't know... Wait - this one I do know. Couldn't blame "agent orange" because none of these hippies ever went to Vietnam - they all burnt their draft cards - remember?

All I do know is that an 87-pound 12-year-old was no match for 15 long-hair draft-card-burning anarchist and that I'm stuck in a pit.  As I have said, I have survived being buried before, but this time - things were different. This time it was getting more and more out of control and getting more and more complicated with the ominous stacking of those nasty old blocks.

I just hoped that I had as many lives as that stupid cat, "Lazarus" who was inside the house watching my doom from the kitchen window - "lucky cat."



Around and up went the bricks - this was WORSE!

They were puffing on those hippie-cigarette thingies happy and evil. Working hard and enjoying every moment of it. With all the dirt that was piled up around me and with the pressure around my chest so great I could barley move my rib-cage every time I gagged (because of the rag over my mouth) and when my body convulsed in fear.

I was a Swede and I would not cry!  Though my insides ached from betrayal and from being cut out of the pack - (disowned, I guess) I was trained not to show weakness.  I was glad my eyes didn't leak, because I don't dare allow them to see me as a victim.  This would only make them happier!   No! I would not grant them that satisfaction... instead I was determined to die like Sir William Wallace - known to be Brave Heart.

I would let them murder me and though my inside person was a 12 year-old-boy desperately longing to find the meaning of love - disappointed, abandoned (once again), and betrayed by my own people - My outside person would die like a man!  I would not betray the Viking code...I would not cry!  I would not allow them that satisfaction.

HA! I win!

The next part of their evil  master-plan came in the form of a old yellow tarp!   A big piece of moldy plastic that was used to protect all the decaying boxes of National Geographic magazines from the seldom rain was now being proudly paraded around the backyard as a athlete would triumphantly display their country's flag after wining an Olympic gold medal.

I was deathly afraid of suffocation and thinking about what they might used this decrepit old yellow piece of plastic for, and it completely freaked me out.  It couldn't get any worse...right?  Well it did.  Little did I know how brilliant the Wolf pack was. Evil can be very brilliant, if you don't believe me - ask Hitler.

Could it get worse? I didn't think so, but it did. The yellow tarp was thrown over the top of the "Igloo of Death"  And that wasn't the end of the diabolically brilliant plan, there was more!  Much more!

"Lord, I'm tired and scared and hurt and was wondering if you can tell me how much longer this will go on?"

  

The Night Walker and...THE FIRE!

The large turn-of-the-century home was a blazing inferno... windows were shattering from the heat and cars in the parking lot were bursting into flame.  Tires sent up black smoke as the gas tanks in those cars blew up one after another. It looked like a scene from the battle-lines in Vietnam. The Vietnam War vet, who was renting a room across the street, began having flashbacks and climbed the to top of  the three story "Pink-House" with a broom - holding it like a sniper with a M16. Hthe crazy guy sat up there taking shots of the enemy as though he was reliving some hellish nightmare that no one should ever have to experience. He shot me twice; once I fell down pretending to be dead, but thought -that maybe -it wasn't too cool.  Though he was perfectly harmless, the poor fella had to be talked down by the police in the midst chaotic mêlée on Harding Avenue that night.

Meanwhile, the clandestine guest - i.e the girls who had been smuggled in, were trapped on the second floor and screeched louder than the sirens of the long awaited firetrucks in blood-curdling cries of shrill terror. The temperature on the second floor was close to reaching flashpoint and old dry timber of the wainscoting was not far from combustion. By this time the stupid Frat-guys on the second floor realized they were trapped and began running around in their underwear screaming louder than the girls, knowing that they had only seconds to escape before being incinerated into a pile of carbon ashes.

Before I finish that story...let me clear some names from my previous list of suspects!

Last time, I have removed the Nuns and Walter Daniels from my list and had discovered that the "Gillemonster" had a perfectly good alibi (that's the "dog-poop story" - which I'll share later). For now, I think it's important to eliminate by bestest friend Tommy from the list. Although he was the youngest person who was considered a possible arsonist, the unique and complex nature of his two-fold condition placed him squarely at the top of the Fire Marshal's suspect list.

Although Tommy was several years younger than me, being right next door, we were best buddies!  Tommy liked to light matches... he would find his dad and my dad's Real Estate Business matchbooks and set fire to just about everything he could. Nothing big, but it did bother his mother. She was pretty concerned about him chewing his fingernails, but was even more worried that he might set fire to something someday and spend much of his eternity in purgatory.  To make matters more complicated, Tommy had a very rare disease; somnambulism. Yes, he was a somnambulant.  I know what some of you are asking:
 "What the heck is somnambulism?"

"Idoes it have to do with haviing air bubble in the blood-veins near his brain stem?"

"Somnambulance...hey, does it have something to do with an ambulance?

"What, does the kid do? Does this disease make him run around like a chicken with its head cut off screaming as though he were an ambulance."

"Is it medical? Delusional? What is it?"

In answer to your questions it does as a matter of fact, have to do with the word ambulance! But first, let's clear this up...it's not really a disease- his mother told me, rather it's a very rare condition. The word ambulance comes from the Latin word 'ambulare' which when translated means to move about. Hence the words ambulance and ambulatory.

"Is he retarded?"

No, he's not a retard... just a little special. When most people are fast asleep he has the propensity to move about... Turns out...Tommy is a certified Sleep Walker!

I was at his house one time and stopped him from going pee in the refrigerator; another time I stopped him from going pee in the kitchen trash and on another sleep over I stopped him from walking down to Kippy's house. Kippy is his cousin, one of the Lennon's who lives on the corner opposite from the fire. The poor kid did all kinds of weird things in the middle of the night and when it was all over - had no recollection at all. TRUE!

With his predilection of lighting things on fire and walking around in the middle of the night -all fingers pointed to him. Even his own mother thought he might have been responsible. So I guess the best news was that on this particular night I was having a sleep over in the two story fort that his dad built in their backyard.  They didn't have snakes and a Veloci-Rooster and a chicken-eating-frog and a mosquito breeding pond in their backyard - they were just normal people. Well, mostly - whatever normal means...but around 11:00 O'clock at night.. I did have to get up and play kick ball for a couple minutes while Tommy was in one of his sleep-states, but the fire didn't happened until much later - after he was settled back in and strapped into the loft in his sleeping bag.  I WAS HIS ALIBI.

Tommy's name goes off the List.

1) My tribe...the Wolf Pack

2) Mr. Blaser

3) Mr. D (that's my dad)

4) Mr. Lennon

5) Frank Nargie

6) Rita Nargie

7) Sea-Shell

8) Leeland

9) Weenie Tripp

10) Johnny Gillemot

11 Tommy Blaser

12) Four boys dressed as girls

13) The Nuns at Saint Marks who lived just behind the house.

14) Walter Daniels 

15) Crazy, Anti-War, Peace-loving members from an opposing Fraternity

16) The Owner of the property.

As for the "Tighty-Whities" (that's what we call tight, white underwear in the United States), Mr. Blaser believing his match wielding - night-walking son may have had something to do with and feeling a sense of responsibility, shot out of bed and ran across the street in his bun-tight skives after hastely slipping into his "Sunday-come-to-meeting" Black polished Real Estate shoes.   WHAT A SIGHT!

His underwear provided him with the alibi he needed as someone who was in bed at the time that the explosive devise went through the window of the old house.
Therefore Mr. Blaser goes off the list.  

1) My tribe...the Wolf Pack

2) Mr. Blaser

3) Mr. D (that's my dad)

4) Mr. Lennon

5) Frank Nargie

6) Rita Nargie

7) Sea-Shell

8) Leeland

9) Weenie Tripp

10) Johnny Gillemot

11 Tommy Blaser

12) Four boys dressed as girls

13) The Nuns at Saint Marks who lived just behind the house.

14) Walter Daniels 

15) Crazy, Anti-War, Peace-loving members from an opposing Fraternity

16) The Owner of the property.

Weenie didn't do it! Her sister Kathy was out on a date...she didn't do it. Their brother Bobby was on top of the Tripp house right next door with a garden hose trying to prevent their house from catching their house on fire.  It wouldn't have made any sense for any of the Tripps - so I they go off the list - yep, all them including little Ricky!

 1) My tribe...the Wolf Pack

2) Mr. Blaser

3) Mr. D (that's my dad)

4) Mr. Lennon

5) Frank Nargie

6) Rita Nargie

7) Sea-Shell

8) Leeland

9) Weenie Tripp and family: brothers sisters, mom, dad.

10) Johnny Gillemot

11 Tommy Blaser

12) Four boys dressed as girls

13) The Nuns at Saint Marks who lived just behind the house.

14) Walter Daniels 

15) Crazy, Anti-War, Peace-loving members from an opposing Fraternity

16) The Owner of the property.

My list was shrinking... meanwhile my dad had joined Mr. Blaser in the rescue of the guys and girls who were trapped on the second floor.  My hairy brothers, along with Donny Blaser, climbed up like cockroaches on top of each other to the balcony and formed a human ladder for the half-naked half-intoxicated refugees to use as a human fire escape.


By the time the firemen got there, half-clad people were running around all over the place. To me it seemed like the scene that I pictured in the the bible where it describes the resurrection in Jerusalem when bodies came out of the grave and began walking around.       ZOMBIES!

Our neighborhood was now filled with wild Zombies...  the pandemonium from a blazing inferno... that included cars exploding and a crazy guy on top of third story turret taking shots at people with a broom handle. Let me tell you - it doesn't get any CRAZIER THAN THIS... A real Helter Skelter it was... Paul McCartney can thank us for the lyrics to the Beatles new song.

The night was still young and Chewbacca has spotted something below the ancient palm in the front yard of the blazing inferno...

For you android users Paul McCartney Helter Skelter

Oh, by the way...just in case you were wondering, the first ambulance was developed in France by Dominique-Jean Larrey in the 1700s.

You Got Nothing On Us - Charlie Brown

I'm getting to the "Great Fire of 1968," but since it is close to Christmas I think I'll take a couple post to share what Christmas was like at my house on Harding avenue in Venice California.

I have tried to tell people about Christmas at my house...but find that there are really no words adequate to describe the level of chaos that took place every Christmas right after Christmas Mass.  I will try, but (I can guarantee you), I'm not even convinced that Hollywood with a big budget would be able to portray on the big screen the scene at our house at Christmas.  Whatever I do here... however, I portray this... no matter how much flourish and embellishment I add...use your imagination, multiply everything by 10 and it'll only get you close.



Remember the Wolf Pack began as somewhat normal children. We did things that other normal Catholic families might do for our family Christmas traditions.

We had a manger; a nativity set with Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus!  We went to bed at night dressed in pajamas... we woke up at 11:00 pm and dressed for church. We went to midnight Mass and came home to find that Santa had filled our living room with presents and toys. Oh what joy!

It is quite possible that we even read the Christmas story from Matthew or Luke's gospel...said, "Happy birthday Jesus" and unwrapped our presents like regualr people. It is likely that we did that. I have some great pictures that would support this rather civil and ordinary Christmas proceedings. (I submit the picture on the right as evidence to support these claims).

 I'm the baby on the front of the rocking horse.









(On the left) I'm the baby crawling on blanket.



Look at how adorable and how normal we once were...



We are the model of the perfect Catholic Family...

The Nuns at Saint Marks Convent would be proud and we might even put the Lennons to shame... could it get any better or cuter than this? 

Now it is important to remember that at this amazing time in the evolution of the Wolf Pack (before the boys turned into wild animals and began devouring flesh and turning on one another) I was a mere baby and have no such recollection of this sweet and reverent demeanor.

By the time my memory kicks in (at about 6 or 7) the older boys are teenagers and had been growing more and more out of control.

By 1968 with the addition of the "Mexican Tomato Plants,"  the Veloci-Rooster, the alligator, the hippie-"girlie/man"-cave, the pond, the mosquitoes, the fleas, the snake cages, the stacks and stacks of old decomposing National Geoprpahic magazines... the addition of cars out front, trailers, boats, car parts and also with the additional members (we kept adding to our clan) Christmas was no longer the idealistic picture seen above. 

By this time in our history Dooh-Dooh Pants had gotten involved in the Boy Scouts and dad helped out every year with the Troop 32 Christmas tree lot.  We sold trees that started at a dollar-fifty that went all the way up to $3.50 for the most expense Nobel Firs on the tree lot. The Blasers next door always managed to buy the best looking tree - I think one year they even paid $5.00 for their perfectly shaped tree. 

My dad would never be caught dead paying that kind of money for a Christmas Tree. He made a dollar donation to the Boy Scouts and somehow managed to bring home a tree worst than Charlie Brown's. Mom wasn't too keen about that and dad would usually bring another tree home from the Boy Scout lot that was twice was bad that no one wanted to buy. As a clever and frugal Swede, he would use old twine to tie the two trees together. Sometimes he drilled holes in the trunk of the first tree and stuck branches from the second tree into the holes to increase the foliage on the incredibility sparse stick he brought home in the first place (This hole-drilling thing only took place on the particular Christmas' when he could find the electric drill motor, find the drill motor chuck and find a drill bit - the convergence of all three was indeed a rarity).




But the good new was: TINSEL!   Tinsel had to be Swedish invention or by thought up by someone from a culture that was also defined by frugality and use of imagination.  You could buy a ton of tinsel for like a buck at Pick and Save and gob it so thoroughly on the branches that you could hide any manner of hideous tree underneath. And that's what we did .

The more kids, the less money spent on the tree; the less money spent on a tree - the more tinsel we packed on the thin and meager branches. Sometimes, I wondered if Charles Shutlz visited our house and got his idea for "Charlie Brown's Christmas."

I wouldn't be surprised if we were his inspiration. 

Anyway, the rambunctious boys were growing up and took all the youthful energy they had for climbing and fighting and channeled it together along with smoking the hippie-stuff out back and melded it into the craziest, the loudest and the rancorous frivolity known in the history of mankind! 

But by the time I had a brain, I'm sure that whatever was taking place at our house on Christmas was much different than what was happening over at the Famous Lennon Sisters' house across the street. I happen to know as fact that the events at our house on Christmas was totally different from what was happening next door at the Blasers.

Deductive logic would conclude that a Dahlin Christmas frenzy had to be completely different from just about anything that was taking place at most homes around the world with those who were celebrating Christmas.  

My mom had a dream. Her dream was that we could be more like the Lennons, (which I sure looked more like something in the picture on the right)  My Mom spent considerable energy describing the rules for engagement as if was a military briefing on how we were to open presents  when we arrived home from Midnight Mass.

She had a perfectly good image of organization...of cooperation... and of  this quiet and peaceful present exchange which she hoped would be a bit more subdued than the lurid din of an active battle zone in Vietnam.

At 11:00 pm Mr. D would bang the ceilings and walls with the handle of broom, and like the staff sergeant, he would begin shouting out commands for the troops to get dressed for war...ummm... I mean for church. The regular high-octane hullabaloo would break out in the mad scramble as the hippies were trying to find pants to wear, because my mom band jeans with holes in them. As usual we fought over socks and I had to sniffed around the floor of Flea-Bait's room looking for stinky old socks to wear that no one wanted to touch (they were shiny and stiff and hard and stood up all by themselves).  

This 50 minute scramble usually involved a lot of screaming, name calling, booger flinging (that was my favorite -I hope you noticed the tone of sarcasm - because boogers always activated my heightened gag reflex) along with Dooh-Dooh-Pants passing potent gas that had the power to empty entire rooms .

My mom's  vision for a serene and sacred evening was usually shot to "H E double hockey sticks" before we even left the house for church (that was one of her words). By the time we rounded the corner in front of the Lennon house, she would be shouting words like this all the way down the street right up to the moment the 14 of us darkened the doors at Saint Marks church, 10 minutes late for midnight mass looking slightly better than drowned rats, but not much better than refugees who had just escaped through dirt tunnels from a prisoner of war camp.  

I will try my very best to paint as accurate a picture as possible - knowing how daunting that task really is.

So until our next time together in my blog titled: The Hand  
               

Merry Christmas

God jul

Wesołych Świąt

¡Feliz Navidad!

Crăciun fericit

С Рождеством

З Різдвом

Весела Коледа

Joyeux Noël!

Καλά Χριστούγεννα

 Buon Natale!

חג שמח

Chúc mừng Giáng sinh

"Long-Hair Hippy Commies" and Markie's Death

11:21 AM

The phone rang like 20 times before one of the hippies finally decided to answer it.  Normally, no one in our family would answer the phone – that was Joan’s job.   Joan was my mom.

Our living room and dining room were filled with the delirious Wolf Pack that had been back in the hidden ivy hangout we called "Wall Drug" communing with the herbs they secretly grew under the code name of “Mexican tomato plants” 

So our house was filled with the likes of this group...(including "Pinky" pictured far left).

 and this motely crew...

And this bunch...

along with this heterogeneous collection...

...all except for Bob of course.  He was in Vietnam! 

             And I'm not talking about a vacation. 

You see, my older brothers (that's all my brothers- by the way, if you haven't caught on by now), no longer used the affectionate and intimate designation of “mom” and “dad.” Instead, they called our parents by their first names or with titles, like - Joan and Mr. D.  I think mom and dad had come to terms with these labels that expressed a distance in relationship. This remote detachment was safe for the unfeeling Wolf-Pack because it was a declaration that there were no demands on their relationship other than existing under the same roof as hostile roommates. 

 

I don’t think my parents minded that too much because it represented a separation of values. Although we were all born democrats, my parents were conservative “Kennedy Democrats”  - you know - a strong America… less government… programs that care for people… but not giving away our future by putting the yoke of debt around the necks of generations not yet born – through wasteful government spending.  Though the world had changed a lot in the last five years since Kennedy’s assassination, their political views remained unchanged and they considered the motley – long-haired, draft-card-burning crew as “dope-smoking commies.” 

 

I think a couple of the Lennon boys were present –  and if I had to guess, they probably still called their parents "mom" and "dad."

Anyway, Chewbacca finally answered the phone and couldn’t make out what Kjersten was saying through all the blubbering sobs and stupid stuff about a leg being cut off and someone dead by the side of the pool. This phone called was just a nuisance to him so he kicked Flea-Bait in the butt and told him to tell Joan she had a phone call – half thinking she might have already been eavesdropping with her little suction-cup-bugging-device she used for wiretapping every conversation the boys had with their girlfriends.

In our house, no one ran up the stairs anymore to tell someone when they were wanted on the phone.  It was viewed as a frivolous waste of energy.  Our communication system was standing at the foot of the stairs and screaming as loud as you can – making sure to use derogatory nicknames that the Wolf-Pack invented –so the Steadmans and the Tripps across the street could hear.

“Hey Puke Breath, phone’s for you!” Or  “Lardo…Pick up the phone!” or “Dooh-Dooh Pants…” they would scream at the top of their lungs while hitting the wall with a broom like dad does on street-cleaning day, and then they would top that off with something really nice like, “You stupid idiot you got a phone call.”  

  

Kindness was not generally found among the list of adjectives used to describe our family.

“Joan”Flea-Bait yelled, hoping to please the older boys.

"... pick up the phone!”

Flea-Bait felt his job was done and Chewbacca had set the receiver down, forgetting about who was on the other end and the urgency of the call altogether. 

Like most typical Saturdays (ever since the zoo incident), Mom had locked herself in her room. Trying to drown out the noise from the raucous below, she turned up the volume on a rerun of Gun Smoke.

11:30 am

When the episode was over, she picked up the phone to call Ida Nargie, who lived across the street, for gossip only to discover the sobbing and the tearful pleas of Kjersten still begging on the other end of the line  hoping someone would eventually walk by and pick up the abandoned receiver.  

“Please!” cried the desperate 9-year-old.  “Someone help us. I think he’s dead!” were the first words mom heard. 

“What Kjersten?” she panicked ―freaking out.  “What’s going on?”

“Mom” Kjersten said almost undecipherable through huge sobs that interrupted her words. Mom could hear the frightful crying in the background from the other kids at the pool.

Choking back the word she dreaded to say. in a battle between lips and brain, her brain finally won as she spit out the foulest tasting words a 9-year-old might ever have to experience. “Mom” she bellowed, “he’s dead.” More crying!  More tears!

Shock! “Kjersten, who’s dead?”  Mom asked, screaming through the receiver in order to get Kjersten's full attention.

 “Markie!” she answered as the flood gates of words began spilling.  It’s Markie… there was a booger and vomit and Ulrich and then there was cold water... and then a pushing match and…and…and…and Ralph went one way and Markie went the other―”

“Kjersten, slow down and just tell me what happened.” 

Kjersten began bawling again. “And…and…and…Markie flew through the glass wall… and his leg is cut off… and he’s lying in a pool of blood…and we think he’s dead...and we didn’t know who to call. Help…Mom!” she resorted to, desperately pleading in incomplete thoughts and tears.

Joan jumped from her bed, unlocked the five latches on her bedroom door and frantically leaped into action. She raced downstairs parting the red sea of long-hair commies partying below, hysterically soliciting help and trying to find the keys to a car that had more than a bucks worth of gas and that didn’t have to be push started.

  

11:03 am - 30 minutes earlier

Markie wanted to show Ralph who was boss and slipped out of his grip again. Just as Markied had planned, Ralph shot backwards like a rocket ship right into the pool. What Markie failed to calculate into his equation was the 12 foot stationary wall of glass 2 feet directly behind him.

 “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”

Markie shot like the Apollo 7 launched a few days ago and flew backwards crashing through the glass wall. Up to this point, the 12-year-old had proven to be pretty indestructible (he had bested pits, and arrows, and ropes and hampers and lived through Salton Sea, but this time he was no match for the tremendous force of this fatal impact. The plate glass shattered spraying shards and fragments throughout the entire recreation room adjacent to the pool. 

Laying bent over the couch, which was just inside the room behind the glass panel– Markie straddled the galls wall - half in and half out of the room. Thankfully, shock had immediately set in and Markie felt no pain, but neither was his brain capable of  processing the severity of the accident! It wasn’t until he tried to stand up by hoisting himself off the couch that he saw the pointed top of glass, which had been protruding through his left thigh.  

Pushing up off the couch, he staggered to his feet as the glass ripped open his entire leg. 

Blood 

Bone

Blood

Muscle

Blood

Looking down into the middle of his leg, Markie laid down on the cold deck where blood mixed with water and tried to hold his dangling appendage together. He told the other kids a joke to ease their pain and to help Ralph with his guilt. Slipping into unconsciousness he told Kjersten to call home… “EXbrook 8 - 0466” he told his baby sister not sure whether she knew the number.  Closing his eyes, he quietly slipped away  whispering the "dying" prayer Sister Edith Mary taught his 7th grade class.

Crying and hysterical, Kjersten made the call and waited for what seemed like an hour after Chewbacca put down the receiver and had kicked Flea Bait in the butt.   

Feeling helpless, Tommy Blaser and Annie Lennon cried, having absolutely no idea what to do. Things like this just didn't happen at the Lennon or the Blaser house, so this was new for them.

Meanwhile, Ralph was useless. He just walked around in circles crying and talking to himself as if he testifying about his innocence in a court of law.  Either that or he figured that if his excuse was good enough, he could buy some time out of  purgatory, not to mention the guilt he was feeling - having had something to do with the murder of his best friend. 

 "Be nice to each other, while you have the chance. You might not get another one."    Markie D   5th grade