5 Our Neighborhood, and More Stories From Childhood. Song: “IF”.

Besides what happened to me at our country club, in my first grade, and in our neighborhood, the following happened to me in our own home, and my brother witnessed it.

Our father gathered my brother and me together with him, and crammed the three of us into our upstairs shower while explaining that it was in order to teach us personal hygiene just like he had learned in the Army, like water on, water off, soaping up, etc. Our father obviously learned this from the military, but because it was such a small shower, while my father was holding me, his soapy arms slipped with me, and my brother surely remembered my high pitched shrilled scream of pain, as well as my running out of that shower like a cat out of water. Although I repressed it, I never wanted to hug, or even be close to my father again, and it’s very sad because our father was the one who needed love the most, having never known his own father. His father was killed in a case of mistaken identity when he was just two, and he doesn’t remember a thing before the age of ten, other than knowing that his mother (our grandmother) dragged him around with her selling Fuller Brushes door to door.

I believe that my brother used what he witnessed our father accidentally do to me in our shower against both me, and our father, for his own purposes, for all of his life. I recall him doing so even during the years when we were trying to enjoy our BBQ dinners in our added outside porch

addition (see photo left) as well as whenever he felt that he needed to allude to it sarcastically in arguments he was losing which had turned into a debate, when I think that my brother bitterly referred to it before our father interrupted him shouting even louder, “Drop the subject”. In fact, I heard how cruelly unforgivable my brother was toward our father many years later by denying him access to talk to, or even be able to see his grandchildren, and not even allowing our father to purchase any gifts of any kind for them. I never saw our father cry until then, and while my father didn’t realize that I saw him crying, he cried after speaking to my brother on the phone when my brother announced that he was stopping all/any future visitation. When the call was over, our father cried just like a very hurt child. I realize, now, that our father was crying just like a lost child would, and while I forgive our father for anything he did to me, it’s sad to know that my brother continued using the shower incident against our father all of his life. I also believe that the shower incident was the reason that my brother became a compulsive controller just like, coincidentally, our father was, too.

My injury which happened at our country club caused nightmares, and I’d wake up screaming. This would wake up my parents because their room was right across the hall, and In the early morning I remember beating the cold running across the hall, and crawling into my parents’ bed for their protection and warmth. I wanted, naturally, to be cuddle-close-by with my mother, but that didn’t go well with my father, which resulted in them arguing. So, our father announced at the dinner table that I would be sleeping upstairs with my brother for a while, explaining that the reason was in order for my brother to be able to help me with catching up on my homework since my latest injury made me miss over a full week of school. It was when my stitches had broke open so I had to be stitched all over again much tighter, and our father, and both siblings had enough of me needing our mother’s attention making sure my stitches wouldn’t break open for a second time. Our father’s latest rule for our study time was that we had to remain absolutely silent, except I was permitted to quietly ask my two year older brother questions about my homework. Unfortunately, whenever I would ask my brother for help, he would only teasingly smile, then hold a book so close in front of his face that even he couldn’t read it.

When I would very quietly persuade my older brother to help me with something that he would have easily known the answer to, he either wouldn’t explain it in a way so that I, too, could learn, or he would purposely confuse me even more. I guess the reason that my big brother never wanted to help me learn anything back then was because academically, was the only way that he knew he could assuredly WIN, like when he lay in hiding after inviting me out to play, and instead, knocked me out with a baseball bat when I walked past. Another time, he bashed me in my forehead purposefully with a golf club causing my speech slur problem, and

then teasingly called me stupid in front of people which I guess made him feel that he was winning, and I sadly realized that after our parents died, he hadn’t outgrown his own problem. After he saw me being traumatized by a policeman in our school lobby, he never said a word to me about it, I guess because he had developed his own sense of survival, and like others, simply didn’t want to be involved. Years after given the chance to help me with my homework, and choosing instead to purposely confuse me, he told me that made him feel so bad, that it was the reason he became a teacher, but then claimed that he never said that. He caused my slurred speech, and I believe contributed to my sister’s speech impediment by purposefully, repeatedly, coaching her to go say to me, “Douglas, you’re TOOPID” when she was four or five. I wonder if it was just a coincidence that he married a speech pathologist. After he had a stroke in his seventies, he claims that he doesn’t remember when he claimed that his boat was lost when he took me to supposedly go out on it when I visited him after our parents had both died (when I didn’t even bring up the bonds which I knew he stole from me, which I could have taken from his file in his basement, but didn’t), nor reported his theft of my co-owned bank account with my mother which we shared for over three decades. I just don’t feel the same way I feel that he does about money. I just hope he doesn’t loose it all gambling.

The kind of jealousy my brother had for me wasn’t confined to the extra gifts and attention received as a result of my injury received at my father’s country club when I was a child.

It carried over to other things, like me being the better baseball player both in fielding, and hitting. I think it was just because I had slightly quicker reflexes, and better coordination at that time, that’s all. But, my brother could run much faster.

We had fun playing dirt bomb fights in our neighborhood. One of them was with some of the neighborhood kids, and my big brother started out on our side, four against four on each side. We all agreed, as usual, to only throw hardened light weight dirt bomb clumps which broke apart easily, with NO AIMING FOR THE HEAD. Unfortunately, my brother quickly convinced everyone else, except me, to turn traitor, and abandon our side… saying “turn tail and retreat”, and they all joined in with the other side. This made it 7 against me, and someone(?) threw a rock “slider” which are sharp, and it hit me right in the face above the eye, resulting in me having to have another four facial stitches. That was when I had 4 stitches over each eye.

Among my brother’s other attempts to try to be sure that I never caught up (or caught on) to him, was when he tried to convince me to go with him to a dangerous construction pond he discovered,

where he tried to get me to swim. He never mentioned the powerful water pump sucking thousands of gallons of water from it all day, or the thick bulging hose stretched across the little dirt side road which our father had driven past each time we got to drive our new Town and Country family station wagon to “The Wedgie Stand”, where we absolutely loved his treat of their special meatballs and gravy wedge sub sandwiches on fresh baked Rye bread… Unforgettable! I think that my brother noticed that hose too, and that may have been what gave him the idea to find that pond, by walking to it from home through the woods. Did someone give him that idea? Whatever the case, that hose remained lying across that dirt side road bulging for all of the months that it took for the construction of the huge new shopping center. (I learned that Chubby Checker ChubbyChecker.com was going to be performing at that same shopping center, but I didn’t get to go). I figured out on my own that the bulging water hose led down off the road into the woods below.

Shortly after that, I noticed that my brother had oddly taken off and was gone all day two days in a row, and when he returned, he excitedly told me that he had discovered a place where we both could SWIM. Since on our recent family fishing trip in Seattle, when I was the only one who caught a salmon, my brother was much more interested in getting better at fishing, and eventually did. So, since he had just found a local place to fish, why would he rush home to tell to me that he had found a great place to swim, and not mention fishing? My brother took me all of the way through the woods to that pond. He lured me there, then desperately tried to convince me to swim. 

The fish we are holding on our driveway (in the photo below) were caught on a family fishing trip, but he wasn’t interested in fishing with me in that pond he found, he was only interested in getting me to go with him where he would try to get me to SWIM..

I nixed his idea when we got there, and we only stayed for a short time. I only sensed that there was a powerful water pump hidden underneath which violently sucked anything floating nearby into it. I figured that out later, too.

This was similar to something my brother did in camaraderie with my cousin while on our family visit. They had gotten me to innocently reach my hand down near a three inch open drain in my cousin’s water fountain outside at our uncle’s house in Alliance, Ohio. When It violently sucked my whole body underwater because my arm went slamming down being sucked into that drain, I very nearly drowned even though my cousin turned off the drain in time. Had I not had that experience “already been there, done that”, I may have been convinced to swim in that pond in the woods where my brother kept trying to convince me to swim.

The next time I nearly died, was before mowing our lawn at our house, and after my brother and I raked up a huge pile of leaves.

He told me to hide completely underneath all of the leaves, which was fun! But, he poured some of the gas from our lawnmower gas can out on the leaves, then lit a book of matches, and tossed them on the leaves causing a huge flash explosion. He often encouraged me to smell gas cans, and I was impulsive enough to do so whenever he prompted me. To me, gas smelled really good, but I can still have a headache just thinking about doing that.

I also remember when our mother had started driving my big brother to school. She would first, because I wasn’t in school yet, put me in the passenger side of the front seat of the car where I usually just kept sleeping. When it was cold in the morning, my mother would open the garage door, and start the car to get it warm. I remember when my brother convinced her to let him be the one to turn the key to start the car, as well as, eventually, be the one to both open the garage door, AND turn the car on for the heat. And, while my mother was inside getting herself ready to drive my brother to school, sometimes my brother would sneak out, and CLOSE the garage door. On one occasion while the garage door was open, and the car was on, I stood up on the passenger seat, and actually saw my brother come out walking around our car with our VACUUM CLEANER HOSE! While I was looking in the rear view mirror, I saw what he was doing. He slid the metal end of our vacuum cleaner hose right into the car muffler, and tried to fit the other end of it inside the backseat. He actually tried closing the car door, unsuccessfully, in order to keep the vacuum hose secured inside. Where would a five or six year old kid get THAT idea? Was someone coaching him on ways to kill me?

I think that I became adept at survival at an early age, because I survived, but I can never forget, nor understand when my brother had such a look of hatred on his face when he looked at me. He looked hatefully, and exclaimed, “Curses”. In fact, “Curses” became the word that he often said out loud when he tried to do things unsuccessfully, like WIN with me. It became the phrase he often used when losing in many of the games we played (until he digressed into using more sacrilegious superlatives).

During the time in our childhood home (pictured below) when I stayed upstairs with my brother on a cot in his room while my stitches were healing, my brother came upstairs one evening just before dusk, and positioned his lamp next to his opened window (his bedroom window is just above the top of the photo below). He took the screen out, and turned the horizontal blinds open, I thought, so that the air could flow better. Then, he asked me if I wanted to play a game. I was thrilled my big brother even asked. He told me to stick my fingers through the horizontal blinds while he ran downstairs to see if he could see them while he stood outside down below on the side of our house. It was getting dark outside, and when he said, “Okay”, I did what he wanted, to appease him, because it was like I was playing his game… while I was still mostly bed bound. I had no idea that my brother had either run to the backyard rock wall, or clear over the backyard wall to do so, but he had just talked to my close neighbor friends who I played games with, named Karen B. & Rita N., who must have needed an answer from my brother about why I had suddenly stopped playing jumprope and hopscotch with them, which the three of us had been doing together on Karen’s driveway on a regular basis for a long time. He had arranged to get them to both come over to wait outside below his window in the dark for me.

I didn’t know he had talked to them, or that what he was doing was orchestrating a very malicious trick on me. He never told me that they had asked about me, nor that they would be waiting in the grass below the window, in order to look up to talk to me from my brother’s open window. I would have never suspected either of them ever coming over at all, especially after dark, because that was the deadline when all of us had to always be inside, unless given permission. Now, I remember that when my two-year-older brother came running back upstairs this time, he was all out of breath, and he had another thing that he wanted me to do to play his silly game. He showed me what he wanted me to do this time. He stuck himself through two of the horizontal blinds, then excitedly encouraged me to do the same when he yelled up again from outside. Since I was bored to death having to stay inside all day and all night until I healed, even though he was playing his game doing something so silly, and apparently fun, it seemed far enough away from anything, to be innocent enough for me to do, and I knew that if I didn’t comply with what he was pressing me to do, that he simply wouldn’t let me be able to play with him at all. So, I agreed to do what he had quickly done through those venetian blinds. Then, he gleefully bolted out, and down the stairs again, and in just a moment, when I heard him say, “Okay”, from down below again, I did what he told me to do and, this time, it wasn’t just my fingers sticking through those blinds nor, as I would soon find out, was it just him watching from down below…

I did it, and immediately thought that I heard what sounded like a faint giggle (probably my brother under his breath). I leaned myself in through those blinds again, and was almost positive that I heard what I thought was definitely a giggle. Since I really didn’t know what to make of it, I tried again, and when I was sure that I heard giggling, I stretched the blinds open, and poked my whole head out to look down below to see my brother pointing up and laughing at me, while seeing my two neighbor friends that I played hopscotch and jumprope with walking quickly away in the dark. After that, Karen was never allowed to play hopscotch or jumprope in her driveway with me and Rita ever again. Karen’s mother was one of the TEACHERS at our school, and I think Rita’s father may have been the detective with the blonde hair and muscular arms who appeared waiting outside my 1st grade window at school.

Rita continued getting the three of us together at her house to play board games, and they were my only lady friends that I really liked and trusted. I don’t think that Rita’s mother even lived at Rita’s house with her, because I never saw her at all, although I never saw her father there, either. I only saw that there was a police car sometimes parked in the driveway. Rita’s father had a beautifully kept backyard lawn which I had no choice but to walk across every day on my way to school, or else I’d have to walk clear down to the bottom of our street in the opposite direction of school, and up the street to our neighborhood’s entrance, then walk toward my school’s direction starting on the same road even further down the main street Rita’s house was on. I’d save about a fourth of the way that it took me walking to school, just by walking through Rita’s backyard.

One day I saw TWO kinds of poisonous looking snakes (see below). The colored snake scared the “bejeebers” out of me when I saw the whole length of it slithering in and out of the rock wall right next to where I, coincidentally, began swinging on our swing set after a neighbor had cut my finger, and after the terrible things had happened to me at my school. This was also when my mother had, uncharacteristically, locked the doors to the house while there was a car parked in our driveway which was the same type of car which had just parked outside my 1st class window at my school. I also remember that just days later, I saw a bunch of black viper smaller baby snakes (see photo) all together on the old broken cement foundation of a rotted out shed which was right where I would climb over the rock wall of delicately stacked sharp flat limestone rocks where I’d cut through the neighbor’s lawn on the the only way I knew of to walk to school.

Someone had kept all of the limestones rocks in that rock wall on our property all lined up by neatly stacking them. I remember slipping on those stacked rocks, and they easily crumbled gouging my exposed knee or elbows. I soon discovered that there were more poisonous-looking snakes (like the black viper type in the photo), all living together under his old broken shattered wooden shed with no roof or walls, which had collapsed onto its cracked cement foundation on the woods side of his property just over that rock wall. Those snakes lived there under the piles of old rotted wood, and under the foundation. I think that my neighbor was even breeding snakes in his newly built garage, which was completely separate from his house, and opposite from where the shed had obviously remained collapsed for many years before we ever moved in. The garage had break-in-proof thick wire squared commercial type window covers on the outside, but you could see through them.

After my realization that there were lots of snakes, I was much more careful climbing over that rock wall for fear of disturbing the snakes. The one thing that my big brother cherished was being able to outrun me, and he would “ditch” me all the time… rules or no rules, and run full speed ahead of me, finding his own way to school, by running through some of the other neighbors’ back yard woods in his efforts to avoid me learning his way(s) of getting to school. This was just after having my unfortunate incident during the first grade, with the man who turned out to be my 5th grade teacher, and when our mother was more insistent on my big brother walking with me both to, and from school.

(see photo of my brother and me on our way walking together to school).

Sadly, after my brother’s malicious trick he played on me, neighbor Karen’s mother (who was an English teacher at my school) stopped allowing Karen from being able to play hopscotch, and jumprope, with me in Karen’s driveway, but Rita would still invite me and Karen over to Rita’s house which was the house next door to Karen’s through their side yard woods. Both of their houses were behind our house, and Rita’s was just beyond our swing set at the top of our back yard. We played board games a few times at Rita’s, and on the last two times that I remember being at Rita’s, Rita mixed up an ice cream milk shake in a blender, poured it into a parfait glass, and brought it into the living room where the three of us played board games on the living room coffee table. After I had taken a sip, and It was time to go home, on my way out, I saw a bottle of Drano next to the blender on the counter top, and I remember how my neighbor Karen had looked all scared at me in a warning-me-way when I had taken a sip, and I never went back to Rita’s house, or Karen’s house again. I don’t believe that Rita ever wanted me to drink Drano and die, but I believe that her father was the detective who came to my school, and when I put that all together with what happened to me at school, and with what the policeman almost did to me, along with Rita suddenly making me know that her father hated me, or anyone, walking over “his” rock wall, I knew that I would also have to stop walking across their lawn every day that I walked to school, or it could mean that Rita’s father would want me dead, too. It still scares me to think how I may have been the only person around observant enough to figure out that Rita’s father may have actually been breeding snakes in his garage. Was he saving their venom? Was it just a coincidence that Rita’s father was a detective who may have been breeding poisonous snakes? Was Rita’s father the plain clothed blonde muscle man with huge arm muscles who I saw that had stopped outside my 1st grade classroom in his government type vehicle right outside of my school exit who came into my classroom looking for ME? Did Rita’s father hate me like my first grade teacher started hating me, and like even Karen’s mother did? Did all of the things that happened to me at school happen because of what my brother tricked me into doing?

I never got to play jumprope or hopscotch again with my neighbor friends Rita and Karen. I remember the last time Rita and I walked Karen home through the little woods on the other side of the long rock wall which separated our back yard from their houses, and how Karen looked so sad because It was the last time that we were ever allowed to play together. Karen disappeared into the dark walking onto her property and into her house, then Rita and I walked and talked shortly while standing together in the little woods between their two houses. It was getting even darker, and the lightning bugs all started dotting the blackness. Rita confused me with something which sounded very strange to me before we each walked our last steps home saying, “Some people might plan on hurting someone(?), and soon”. I think that I told her something like I didn’t understand, and she replied, “You should know that it might HAPPEN TO YOU”! Then, she said, “I’m telling you this because I like you”. Then as we each walked away to our own houses she bluntly stated, “And my father hates anybody cutting through his backyard”.

So, I started secretly following my brother to school immediately the next day because I knew that I had to find another way to walk to school. I tried following my brother through all of the other backyard trees, hills, and paths which he took to school, and was able to learn my brother’s route making it possible for me to walk to, and from, school a whole new way. Sometimes I could catch up with him, but when he saw me, he always began running faster to ditch me. That was the game he always played, and I guess that he felt that he was too cool to walk with his little brother, or it was his way of winning. Winning was very important to him. Regardless of our mother’s newest rule for us to walk to school together, he never walked all of the way to school with me even once, and I never saw my two neighbors Rita, and Karen ever again. My brother started acting as if he didn’t even know me, and besides it suddenly getting worse for me at my school as if it was all my fault (a four year old kid’s fault), then I got raped in the neighborhood.

Just days later, I was on my way to play somewhere again, alone. I walked through the fields and woods where I often played during weekends, and off school days. I was walking behind the same nearby neighborhood houses’ back yards that I had always walked past, and suddenly two very early teenaged girls appeared. The one named Cathy stopped me walking in the tall grass. She held me still, pulled down my jeans, and told me that it was very important to use me to teach her sister something. She explained (as she did it to me), that it was simple to learn to do, and I had no idea why she needed to teach her twin sister this. And, I never forgot when she examined me very, very, closely, she commented, “There is definitely something WRONG with this one”!

I was still only six, but soon, I got my brother’s old Raleigh three-speed bike. It had a broken gear box, but I could pull the wire into first, and “auto pilot” into 2nd & 3rd gear by loosening my pedaling pressure just right making it even better than a ten speed with my combined imagination, and determination. I started riding it clear into the next town to a candy store I had discovered where our parents had stopped after they had started taking us to church. Just inside that store’s door, there was a penny gum-ball machine which gave you any five-cent candy bar that the store stocked (like a GIANT Milky Way, or Three Musketeers), or even a large Bazooka Bubble Gum roll, for free if you were lucky enough to get one of the several yellow gum-balls with a red candy stripe which made it look like a little baseball! THAT was where I would start riding my bike every week, in order to spend my whole quarter weekly allowance. I liked bubble gum so much that my brother usually talked me out of my baseball cards by trading me for his big square piece of gum that came with them. I also usually started purchasing five, large five cent bubble gum rolls, and I did so for the years that we remained in our childhood home. To me, the discovery of this store was the greatest discovery that I had ever made so far in my life. Although I ended up with just about four cavities in every tooth in my mouth except the front teeth, my weekly bike rides to that store gave both parents a break for the hours it tool for me to ride there on my bike, and get back home. At least it was safe for me while I was riding my bike. Like the Kenny Rogers song, “Life was so much easier FIFTY years ago”.

I eventually learned that I could ride my three-speed Raleigh bike even further, like all of the way to Playland Amusement Park. On my long trek to Playland, I met a friend who had an endless supply of tickets for the rides, and they could be used for everything else offered, using tickets, in the whole park. I starting spending whole days there with him, and having the time of my life. On one of my bike-ride visits before I entered the amusement park, I rode all of the way around the one-way entrance circle, and I happened to ride right past a girl that I recognized. She was the one who had used me to teach her twin sister the thing she did to me in the high grass behind her house, and she had invited me in to show off “her” house! She (or was it her twin sister) happened to be standing at the one-way only drop-off circle, and it was also used as a one way pick-up zone. I just rode past her on my bike way too fast to say hi, or ask anything. I just rode by, recognized her, and rode back out to where I laid my bike down in the grass by a close-by wooded area just off the road far enough away that no one could see me, or my bike, and sat in the grass waiting for my friend to arrive. At first, I guessed that she was just waiting for a ride. I sat in the thick grass waiting all morning for my friend who had promised me amusement park tickets, and I soon noticed that moments after she was picked up, she was dropped back off again. I remember thinking that it was odd that soon after she had been picked up, that she got dropped back off moments later. Now, I realize, well over 50 years later, WHAT she was REALY doing. And, I also realize, what the REASON may have been… WHY neighbor Cathy needed to teach her twin sister, how what she was doing, was done, and she used ME to teach her. And, I realize, now, that it was because she needed to take sick time off. I remember feeling stinging pain from the time I had walked behind our neighborhood houses, until when I had no choice but to go to summer work camp in upstate NY. That was the year while in fifth grade, I had spent so many of my school days sleeping in the nurses station that I couldn’t count, and it was because because I just felt sick knowing that my 5th grade teacher had molested me while I was in the first grade! Now, I realize that I may have felt that way from the time that my neighbor used me to teach her twin sister what to do in order to take her “spot” at the Playland amusement park!

Unfortunately, even another incident happened to me on my way to the same meadows and woods where, as a child, I often went alone to play. I had walked past the house in our neighborhood where everyone played dodge-ball, and as I walked just two more houses away, a big black-haired teenage girl in a cheerleader skirt ran out of her house, and over to me. She stopped me as I walked by in the space between the neighborhood back yards, surprising me. She walked straight into me, grabbed me by my shirt collar, and led me forcefully over to her family’s woodshed, and right inside with her, and shut, and locked the door which had the blinds closed so light came in, but no one could see in. She was a big girl, and she immediately got me ready to play her game which I, again, had little choice but to participate in, and I wouldn’t have been able to leave if I desperately needed to. She immediately jumped up, and sat on a wooden table slab where my face was suddenly less than a foot away, and I was looking right at something that I had never seen before, which startled me so much, that I remember it feeling just like I had gotten a slight, but real, electric shock. Before I knew what was happening, she reached down and grabbed me with both hands by my shirt, and lifted my whole body in one continuous motion scraping my shins on the way up on the corners of the thickly stacked layers of 4 by 8 foot plywood boards that she was lying on. She manhandled me while holding me pressed on top of her with her arm, while forcibly rocking me back and forth inside with the palm of her hand. Besides scraping my shins while pulling me up on her, she caused half of another injury while pushing me in so hard with the palm of her hand that it hurt really badly. I had already experienced for a few weeks feeling what it was like having to walk with tight stitches down around there. Now as I walked home, I experienced yet another very uncomfortably unnatural kind of hurting around that same area. I was fortunate not to have to had just gotten used to having that kind of a feeling for much of my life, like many other guys. I had walked, and stomped hard enough on my way home that doing so suddenly made me feel back to normal.

I was scared and scarred, but my scraped shins healed and, luckily, my really scary other temporary injury repaired itself by walking. It dropped just before I had reached my house. Nonetheless, I remained confused. And, because of all of the things which happened, I didn’t understand a lot of stuff correctly for a lot of my life. I found out later, that this neighbor girl did the same thing to my best friend. He lived right behind her, and across the street. I think that she did it to him often, probably because he couldn’t avoid her, living so much closer to her than I. He was lucky to have moved shortly afterward. I discovered this photo of the two of us playing near our back yard rock wall (the wall I had to climb over with the poisonous snakes nearby at the very top of our hill).

Up until then, I had played a lot of dodgeball in the only place in our neighborhood we could (two doors away from the shed in the backyard where they had the birthday party that I wasn’t invited to). We played dodgeball on the first corner house at the entrance to our neighborhood. It had a large hard-wood windowless garage surrounded by two side rock walls (excellent for dodgeball). I always played with the same neighborhood kids, with no incidents, until that neighbor hit me in the back of my head. I wasn’t even IN the dodgeball game that we were playing, because I was sitting out waiting for the next game. He ran up from behind and smashed me right on the top of the back of my head, while I was totally not expecting it. The huge hard heavy red medicine ball was pumped up with air way over the maximum, and it was never used for our, any, dodgeball games, because it was way too large. Coincidentally, It was the exact kind of medicine ball that my teacher had recently used to enable her to pick me up by my ears, after I had only been trying to be helpful for her by retrieving it, after preventing it from continuing to roll down our playground hill, and getting lost in the bushes at the end of our recess at school. Now, after being whacked in the head with the same ball, I barely, dizzily, was able to walk my own way home, but did so immediately, and I never played with any of them ever again. It gave me a headache I can never forget… one more of several concussions. While I was trying to heal from that head injury, everyone in the neighborhood was invited to her little brother Nicky’s birthday party, except me. However, I still received one of the gifts which they gave to all of the party guests, just for going…. a brand new wallet(?!). Go figure.

The things that happened to me during my first grade caused long term physical and emotional problems which were impossible to avoid, prevent, understand, or deal with. I could never explain it to anyone who might have been able to help me, because I didn’t understand it, although I think that what happened was no secret to my teachers at my school who knew exactly what their fellow teacher did to me. It plagued me through my years at that school, and beyond. Whenever my 2nd, or 3rd grade elementary school teachers asked me an academic question, I often answered, “YOU know” because I was referring to what happened to me, and felt I KNEW that THEY DID KNOW, TOO. I could only try to initiate a conversation about it. The one and only chance I ever had the opportunity to discuss it back when it happened, was with a visiting counselor who tried to talk with me in a short meeting which didn’t go well, because it was all held within three feet of the teacher who picked me up by my ears, so was all within earshot of her. I knew that THEY KNEW what happened to me, but they wouldn’t/couldn’t(?) discuss it with me. I WANTED to talk about it, but I believe that they really didn’t. Nobody did. (Then, I luckily spent my 4th grade in Seattle Washington where my dad lived for a year while working.)

I was placed in the rear of my 1st grade classroom side by side with a classmate from France who didn’t speak a single word of English. She had wildly curly-hair, and one day she grabbed my head, and gave me a big sloppy kiss with her huge wet lips, followed by my teacher moving me up to a first row seat right in front of the teacher’s desk. I believed, then, that it was because my teacher liked me so much, too! Sometimes she read stories to the whole class while I sat in that first chair, and often my teacher left her desk, and smiling ever so sweetly at me, she sat down right on top of my desk nearly asphyxiated me with her perfume. I only vaguely remember the stories which she read to the class, and that was only because her reading was done in her effort, I believe, just to get the whole class to fall asleep. I also think, if I remember correctly, that this was right after she had scheduled a sit down parent meeting (I think that it was with just with my father). Whether it was a result of that meeting, or because that girl kissed me, or because of me running after the medicine ball which would have, otherwise, likely been permanently lost in the bushes, or for something else, at some point, my teacher started treating me as though she hated me. She picked me up by my ears in front of the whole class (story on page 3A, & 3B). She even started sending me once a week to be with the teacher who molested me who was the teacher who went to great lengths to try and get me to remember him and he, also, moved me to the front of his classroom! Then, on my last day of school in my 5th grade, and in in the last five seconds before the final bell rang, he screamed into my face just to scare me. That indeed made me remember that man, and I believe that he was the same man with the same red hair who had molested me during my first grade (story pages 3A,B,&C).

I’ll also never forget the revelation which unraveled on our family moving day from Portchester to Rye NY. Our parents were already in the car, and anxious to leave, and neither parent would allow my big brother to go back inside the house to retrieve anything, because the house was already completely empty and the moving van was full in the driveway. However, there was something my big brother had hidden in the house, and I remember that he was acting very anxious for a reason; he didn’t want to be eaving a whole shoe box full of baseball cards that he had systematically stolen from me over time, and hidden. While I didn’t know exactly where he had hidden them, his actions, alone, gave him away even to his little brother (me).

Earlier, on our very last day in our childhood home, to keep us out of the way of the movers, our father ordered my brother and me to sit upstairs in my brother’s bedroom attic. He ordered us there while the movers finished loading the last bit of the entire contents of the house into the moving van. My brother and I sat in that attic for hours divvying up all of our baseball cards which we agreed to divide 50/50. We selected from out of our own our own shoebox full, one by one, in order to be absolutely fair, and sure that we each ended up with the same exact amount.

During the last moments when it was time to leave our childhood home, it became obvious that my brother was hiding something because of the way he began squirming when our father would not allow him to go back into the house. Still in the house, and in a secret hiding place, was “his” baseball cards (his stolen ones). And, since it was impossible for my brother to break away unnoticed to retrieve them, he ended up having to leave them all behind, because if any of us had seen that he had more, we would have all known that my brother hadn’t learned to be fair, or honest with his brother. It saddens me knowing that my siblings both took advantage of me all of the way into old age. THE FOLLOWING “HOUSE” poem (BELOW) WAS WRITTEN BY OUR MOTHER DOROTHY DOVER (9/16/1921 – 5/3/2003)…

Today we sold our little home. We lived there 8 full years.

It saw us thru some crucial times.

Saw all our hopes and fears.

We say it saw – well, could it see? –

If it had eyes – that cannot be!

If that were so, and it could see,

It must have heard – so it had ears.

Oh no! but most agree

It did have personality!

It had a feeling all its own.

Individually stood alone.

The more we think about our place,

The more sure we become –

The smile upon its front-door face –

Its charm, and beauty, and its grace

The way it joined in all our fun –

It had a soul like everyone.

We can remember at times

it was sad

But only if someone there was mad.

We can remember at times it would

sing

Its windows would shine – its laughter

ring.

It was almost as tho’ our home could

talk. 

Today we had to say farewell –

To our home we loved so well.

As we pulled away about to depart –

It said “I’ll live always – within your heart.”

Our parents would have wanted all of their children to learn honesty in life. Unfortunately, my brother couldn’t wait to take over as the one in control upon the death of our father, and he based his decisions on his own personal opinions of what he wanted the situation to be, ignoring both parents’ orders and intentions. As a result, my mother and I ended up being victims of both siblings’ thefts and abuses, and we paid dearly trying to keep our family together to the very end. I chose to work for our parents for a stretch of ten years, twice, while both siblings chose not to.