Careless Talk: Jennifer Crocker

I cannot remember whether it was third or fourth grade, only that I did not know what sex was. Only that it involved kissing and nudity with someone whom you "liked," and that it was to be desired. When I said what I said, I wonder if in part I was throwing a line out there, begging someone to say something about sex that would clear it up for me? What I said to Seth Gleaves and some others at the lunch table that day (I believe that it was in the Fall) was: "I want to have sex with Jenny Crocker." Again, I really had no clue. Like maybe we would kiss for awhile naked and then at a certain point we would "have" sex. . . "having" being like consuming something. . . did I picture the climactic action as something like eating a parfait together? What would we "have" together? And yet I knew the language of "having" proper to sex; I didn't say "I'm gonna do a sex with her," or "We're gonna do sex to each other." I knew the grammar, but not the meaning, or even a half-adequate image. But I said it. The kids around me were shocked. They couldn't believe that someone they knew -a peer, no less- was going to have sex. Well I was, it was settled. Made up my mind. I was not aware of the predatory tone of this claim, but Seth was (did he know something I didn't? Did he get "the talk" long before I got the news of what it really was?) Seth scrambled to the other end of the lunch table and sat across from Jenny Crocker and her mom, Betty Crocker, who was eating at school with Jenny that day. I've never had much luck with timing (not that there's ever a good time for a child to voice their naive, rape-esque plans). I can remember Seth's face. As he reported my words to Jenny and her mother, he had a look on his face like he was revealing the secret plot of a criminal to a policeman. I don't remember being that nervous regarding what her response might be. I still didn't know what sex was or why it was a big deal, really. I thought knowledge of it was suppressed because it was something like doing a backflip on a trampoline: fun, but dangerous, and therefore inadvisable (and perhaps there's some truth in that). When lunch was almost over, Betty Crocker got up to leave and as she passed behind me leaned down and said in my ear (loudly, not whispering), "You just keep your ideas about sex to yourself, mister!" Which wasn't perhaps the most constructive response. I feel that I should have been taken very seriously, or not seriously at all. She should have addressed it more directly. I should have gotten in a shit-heap of trouble. But it was enough to keep me from talking about sex anymore until fifth grade, when I talked about it every day and still didn't really know what it was.

Cruelties Received: Antione Struthers/Felipe Santos

Antione Struthers was smaller than me, but he had the biggest damn mouth at Pennington Elementary School. And he had power, somehow, with that mouth. I think that Felipe's loyalty to Antione was familial, a first or second cousin, perhaps. Though I vaguely feel that their picking on me was ongoing, I remember only specifically one day outside at PE when Felipe was running after me, throwing tennis balls at my legs per Antione's instructions. Felipe called me "Marcus da Carcass." I think he just liked the rhyme, and didn't realize how terrifying it was for a third grader with abnormally large muscles to refer to me laughingly as a "carcass." Clearly he intended to kill me eventually, after playing with me for a time, like a cat with a mouse. It wasn't personal at all, somehow. Sometimes Felipe would just talk to me casually as if we were friends, and he seemed genuinely nice. And then Antoine would walk up and Felipe would remember that he was supposed to hate me. I only felt mildly terrorized. We were pretty heavily supervised, so they couldn't get away with much. Towards the end of my fourth grade year, though, Antione told me "When we get over to Buena Vista, there ain't gonna be nobody there to protect you." We were both headed to Buena Vista next year for fifth grade, a school right across the street from a rough area of government housing. I sweated bullets for roughly the next eight months of my life, constantly looking over my shoulder once I got to Buena Vista, expecting little Antoine to shiv me. I actually never saw him there at Buena Vista at all, and don't know what happened to him and Felipe.

The Ferris Family's Pool

I was trying to step onto a pool float. It was one of those that was body-length, made for lying on to tan. I didn't know how to swim but thought "Well, as long as I just stay on top of the float, I won't even touch the water." So I just tried to step on it with all my weight and it slipped up and I fell into the six foot end of the pool. I took in some water and thought I was going to die, and after what felt like a long time a hand grabbed me up and pulled me out. I don't think that my dad was a good swimmer either, so that's why he didn't jump in to get me, lifeguard style. He just laid flat on his stomach by the side of the pool and kinda rooted around in the water for me. I think I coughed up some water for a minute, and then headed inside to warm up and probably cry because I felt horrible. I remember everyone sitting at a table close to the pool laughing hysterically. In my memory, they are all looking at me, pointing, clearly very amused at the foolish spectacle I had made of myself. This seems ridiculous, though, and I'm sure they must've been somewhat oblivious of the situation (which was, I think, both more inconspicuous and short-lived than I had thought). I didn't see this, though. I was sure they were laughing at me, and screamed as loud as I could at them "It's not funny! I almost died!" I remember hating them so much for what I perceived as their perverse calluosness. I really had thought I was going to die. I was pretty scared of the water thereafter and didn't learn how to swim until I was sixteen or so. Like my father, I'm still not a strong swimmer.

Strange Bonds: Ronald Linehan

Ronald Linehan, when I knew him best, was a 6'2" 30 year old man covered in wiry black hair and acne, rarely seen not wearing his favorite Jurrasic Park t-shirt (though he often paced the house shirtless). He was my friend. Ron had a low IQ and a sense of social development that was arrested around the age of 12. He and his parents lived a few houses catty corner to my own. Ron had gone to school with my older brothers, and they loved to make Ron laugh (which Ron was prone to with little provocation). And since I spent so much time with my much older brothers, I spent time around Ron. Living with his parents, he had all the time in the world to do whatever he wanted, really. This entailed mostly playing basketball in his backyard, drinking several pots of black coffee a day, and spending the rest of his time playing video games. It was an awe-inspiring video game collection. He had every system on the market, and all the classic ones, too. Countless games. And that steering wheel/pedals peripheral for driving games. It was my discovery of such treasures that intitiated our friendship. I often went over to Ron's house after school to play video games, or just watch Ron play video games. He was a masterful player. He was committed, working at it for countless, coffee-addled hours. I remember walking over to his house, after I hadn't seen him in a few weeks, excited that he would have a new video game. I remember walking up the steps to his front door and ringing the doorbell thinking (with somewhat exceptional introspective insight for my age, I think) "Am I coming here because I want to hang out with Ron, or because I want to play video games?" Both, I thought, waiting. Nothing wrong with both.

Senseless Moments: Lee Whitfield

I clenched my fists on the playground of Woodbine Baptist Church. I think I was watching Dallas Star, Lee Whitfield, and Lee's girlfriend (I think her name was Krystal, spelled like the tasty burgerette) joke around and be fourth grade cool. I hated Lee's gold necklace, Dallas' rebellious mullet, and Krystal's beautiful freckles, bespeckling her body like so many sesame seeds on a warm bun. Whenever I attempted friendliness, my affections were spurned. What had I to bring to the table? What could I add to Lee and Dallas's encylcopedic knowledge of racist jokes? I clenched my fists and simmered with inadequacy. I boiled, and the expression this finally found was in running towards the nearest window of the church building with my fist outstretched in front of me, shattering the glass. I looked down at my hand, at all the blood, and started wailing (it was somewhere between screaming as if my head were on fire and boo-hooing over a dead pet). I was ushered inside by a calm adult, who calmed me, but my mother soon got involved and her overreaction prompted my overreaction, which then reinvigorated her overreaction, resulting in an escalating, cyclical mutual craziness. I guess we composed ourselves and I went and got my first stitches ever, the scars still white today on my ring finger and wrist. After I got the stitches taken out, we had dinner at Shoney's to celebrate. At the time, the reason I gave for why I did it was that Lee Whitfield had dared me to. I don't think he did, but I'm not sure. I think my motive was either A. that I thought that breaking the window would be a really dramatic, cool gesture that might win me an appreciative audience, allowing me to vent my anger and constructively address the source of that anger (my uncoolness/ friendlessness) or B. I went crazy for a few minutes.

Senseless Moments: Ian Jones

Mrs. Morrow was almost never absent. Even that day, she felt present, peering over our shoulders at our new cursive. Our substitute had a New Zealander accent (a fact or conjecture I realize now only in retrospect, from the sounds of memory). He was older, hair-growing-out-of-his-ears old, and it seems to me now like he would have had stories to tell. Which, actually, is what he was doing, I think. Yes, I recall him pacing the room, tracing a zig-zag pattern between our rows of desks recalling age-appropriate, didactic anecdotes. We had had a few different substitutes who had done this. . . I'm recalling Mrs. Canada, who always talked about the trip she and her husband had taken to the Holy Land. Settling at the front of the class, the old man faced us and continued. But Ian Jones and I were not listening. For as long as we could do so out of earshot, we had been whispering things against him. Long strings of curse words, squeezed together back to back, as repetitive and yet as inexplicable as DNA chains. They were like magical incantations we were leveling against him, confident that our steady streams would inevitably effect his spontaneous combustion, to our glee. He had done nothing to merit our spite but be new and different (betraying his weakness by smiling, stupidly assuming our innocence). Ian had actually taught me how to cuss. Here's to you, Ian Jones, for teaching me the basic grammar of cussing.

Cruelties Received: Ben Pearson

Ben Pearson's mom (I think that her name was Becky) remembered me walking up to their house on Modena Drive when I was maybe nine, dressed in a cowboy outfit, asking for Ben. I don't remember that. I remember getting off the bus one day with Ben at the foot of Modena's steep hill in front of my house. Ben's house sat at the top of the hill, a beautiful two story brown brick with a high front porch and Greek pillars. As we walked I said something absently honest about some girl Ben liked named Alexia Hendrix. I had innocently forgotten, as a new fifth grader, that candor and candid speech were not highly prized in middle school, that awkward, angry sea of insecurities. Ben, as rail-thin as I was but a year my senior, grabbed me and threw me down in our neighbor's ditch. He straddled my terrified torso, his hands clasped around my wrists, shaking them emphatically as he ordered me to promise never to repeat what I had said to anyone ever again. I promised. He was serious in that way only preteens can be, when absurd banalities become matters of life and death. He was spitting angry, the spittle that collected on my scrunched up face no doubt due in part to the salivary impediments of his braces. He got off of me and stomped off up the street to his two-story house, which amazed me. To lie in bed and listen to music while internally cursing his step-dad, Paul, the captain of a paddlewheel riverboat, the General Jackson, which amazed me. To anticipate his weekend at Opryland Themepark, riding the Hangman twelve times in a row, which amazed me. To be the person and have all the things which stupidly, completely amazed me.

Cruelties Given: Matthew Blackman

Behind Pennington Elementary sat six little trailer-like classrooms called "portables," though I don't think they ever went anywhere. In one of them we had PE in the winters, which mainly entailed stretching and forced square-dancing. In remember one day sitting in a row indian-style, our backs against the wall. Most of us had our sweatshirts or sweaters on, and then the coaches kept the portable so hot. Our parents had lovingly layered us, we who shuffled from the heat of the main building through the cold to the steam of the portables. Everyone so afraid of the cold. We were in a row, faces forward likely receiving instructions for the next activity. No, now I remember, and this makes more sense (or because it makes more sense, I'm remembering it). Mrs. Gleaves had stepped out of the room for a moment and we had been positioned where we were and warned with the great ontological imperative: "Be good." We sat in silence, sure that the moment we did anything besides being good she would walk back in. We sat in silence and for reasons I can't now remember I got up and walked seven paces to the right in front of Matthew Blackman. I leaned down in front of him and punched him hard in the stomach. He slumped forward, crying, forehead on the floor as I walked back to my spot and sat in silence as before. Had I been waiting for such an opportunity? What had he done to deserve the blow? I don't remember. "Be good." Could be more constructively phrased. "Do good," maybe. "Continue to do what you're doing." Mrs. Gleaves walked back in with the cold behind her, and seeing Matthew doubled over said sternly "What happened?!?!" I don't remember if I confessed, or if the other kids outted me. Or if Matthew and everyone else were afraid to speak, and we all just silently commenced with the square-dancing, no one wanting to dance with the kid who punches people cold.

Senseless Moments: Paul Hunt

My first best friend was named Paul Hunt. He lived a few streets over from me on Maplecrest. He had a giant rottweiler named Charlie whose open mouth was bigger than my face. His father, Ron Hunt, was of the Hunt Brothers Pizza dynasty, currently served at 6000 locations in 27 states (although I think he was a cousin, not a brother). I remember one day on the playground I said something very insulting to him. He was getting on my nerves, saying things that I thought were stupid. I think this was partly because I had much older brothers, so I assumed I was much mature than anyone else my age. I had learned disdain at six. On this day, he had had enough and told me that we couldn't be friends anymore. I was terrified at the prospect of losing his friendship as he marched away, determined to move on with his life. I think perhaps he had been talking about Darkwing Duck a lot, and I thought that show was stupid (and let's face it, it was no G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero). I didn't know what to do, but I suddenly felt desperately alone. I do not understand the logic of the following: I found the dirty tangle of a popped balloon lying on the blacktop, grabbed it up and ran towards him with it, panicked and on the verge of tears. "Here, Paul! Here! I got this for you! Be my friend!" He looked at the weird trash in my hands, took it, and looked back at me. "You think you can buy my friendship?" I also do not understand his taking my offer so seriously. But it was clearly the principle of the offer that he was so disgusted with, his kindergarten moral compass clearly better balanced than mine in the heat of this 90s soap opera. I do not remember details from there, only that Paul forgave me. He moved to the country the next year, and last I checked (via MySpace) he's a bi-curious mechanic living in Clarksville.

Cruelties Received: Shannon Shelton

Shanon Shelton was a spacious woman with perma-flared nostrils like a crazed Spanish bull. She didn't like the word "No." She didn't like it when I spoke words. Her mother was the day care director at the small Baptist church, which had to account for her continued employment there. One day in her dominion --a dirty dining-hall sized spaced called "The School-Age Room"-- I said some word or words to the effect of "No." Shannon's visionary gift of punishment was poured out on me. She hoisted my fifty pounds up onto a rickety fold-up table and ordered me to lift my arms up in full cruciform. I complied. Then she ordered all the other children in the room to point at me and laugh. They all joined in without hesitating, and the laughter-on-demand seemed surprisingly authentic. I stood there and cried and when my arms started to hurt, I jumped down off the table and ran out of the room, upstairs to be comforted by my mother, the church secretary. I remember fantasizing about Shannon's death, though I don't remember if I was the one killing her. I probably didn't think I could kill her. She seemed to me like an invulnerable Final Boss who, even after you've launched several rockets into their face, just won't die. She still works at the daycare, but she has her own kids now. I'm sure she's gotten softer.

Suburban Childhood Recapitulated

My roommate Stephanie recently told me about a writing exercise recommended to her by a friend: write about one memory a day from your childhood. I thought this a good idea and once I started it, I fell in love. Thinking about such things brings me a peculiar mix of joy, sadness and wonder, so I hope that I can convey some of that.