Forty-eight Years of Teenaged Angst Is Enough

I admit it. I'm tired of protecting people who failed to protect me. Yes, I'm thinking I've played the "victim" card long enough. I've lost my swagger. I'm too old to keep going back to my childhood and adolescence.

I'm pleased my mother never learned to use the internet. Our last names are different, so I'm going to speak plainly, and if there are hurt feelings, well, too bad.

I swear, every story I tell here is true. Some will make your hair curl. Some are just sad. The only person I still know who ever saw my mom act up in her prime is Jackie Landis (I know it's Jacqueline but you're Jackie to me) and you have to trust me on this Jackie, my mother was on her best behavior that night when she came to retrieve me from the protection of your family.

When I was a kid, my mother dumped me with a lot of different people. This worked in the case of my grandmother and grandfather, but not when I didn't know who the people were at all. My grandmother was never what one could have called warm or loving, but at least she was family. I remember I lived with one family, and to this day I couldn't tell you who they were, any of their names, or how I came to be there. At least I think my mom was at that house a lot of the time.

Now, before anyone starts saying how they knew my mother was no good, I certainly never saw anyone ride to my rescue on a white horse when I was a little kid. At least my mother sort of knew where I was most of the time.

In fifth grade, my mother snookered my fourth grade teacher into watching me while she went to Texas. We lived in Las Vegas, Nevada. My teacher--John, as I was allowed to call him at the studio apartment we lived in, fancied himself a "Mr. Scoutmaster" type. During the summer, he took groups of boys--this would have set off alarms today--on trips to the Northwest in his truck with a camper lid. Yellowstone, Bryce, etc., etc. Anyway, he became my fifth grade teacher at a new school, and every day I went with him to our classroom.

The only really awful thing I remember about this guy was the way he would shake the daylights out of kids in class. He let loose on me a time or two, and it was frightening. So much for shaken-child syndrome. I remember little else of the six months or so I spent in his care. I swear, I blanked it out but I don't think anything sinister took place. Maybe it was that all that shaking.

Now, John liked to sing. He formed a group called the "Boy Rangers,"( I swear) and led us out once or twice a week to sing old standards.

Here were a bunch of kids doing 40's standards out in a parking lot. He told us once that we were supposed to get on the "Ed Sullivan Show" when it came to Vegas one Christmas. It never happened.

John had some problems it turned out. He claimed my mother didn't send the money from Texas each month like she promised. I don't know if that was true. I know he always seemed kind of broke but didn't have anything to show for it. We ate pretty regular anyway, and sometimes on payday, we'd walk down to this fast food joint that sold hamburgers and tacos ten-for-a-dollar. This was 1962 remember. I swear we bought a dollar of each. Now that was a good day. Back to John being broke, it ended up he was a gambler, and not a good one.

This all leads up to the first time I remember being really depressed. One night, John parked somewhere on a side street in downtown Las Vegas while he went gambling. It seemed like I sat there for hours in the dark, and maybe I did. I put my hands around my neck and decided I was going to strangle myself. (I didn't say I was smart.) Eventually John came back to the car, and lo and behold, he had won what seemed like an incredible amount, maybe $250. Next day it was tacos and hamburgers.

About the last month of the school year, my mother came back from Texas. If I told you how her job worked out, you would swear I was fibbing, so I won't. I moved in with my mother. John was on his own. I couldn't have been happier.

Well, John ended up stealing the little black-and-white portable television I had brought from my house while my mother was away. And later, he absconded with all the money he had collected from the parents of another flock of kids he said he was going to take on to Yellowstone.

Nonetheless, it's time I took credit for all the stupid decisions I made as a kid. I got in my share of trouble. I quit college after my first year despite being set up with a job that paid well and was tailored to my hours in class. My mother started to become more meddlesome than I could take. I quit, and was off to San Franciso, leaving college--my hometown--and any friends I still had. I was depressed before I left San Diego. That's a poor excuse though.

Still it all worked out. If I hadn't moved on I never would have met my wife and I wouldn't have my great girls and my fantastic granddaughters and sons-in-law. I've been extremely lucky. I'm not a victim. I struggle, but I am still kicking.

What's the moral? The hell if I know.

"Nobody's Fault But Mine"

Nobody's fault but mine
Trying to save my soul tonight
It's nobody's fault but mine