Tag: Childhood

I Hate Moths

Moths are homely butterflies. I’m sure some weirdos like moths, but I don’t. It’s not just because they are ugly. If I hated all things ugly, I’d have disowned half my family and all my wife’s family. 

My moth hatred is like Spiderman. It has an origin story. My “death of Uncle Ben” took the form of my older brother’s lying soul. 

We were spending the summer in Daytona Beach with my grandparents. Moths were an issue at night. These flying monsters swarmed around the porch light.

My brother noticed the look of concern in my eight year old eyes. He saw an opportunity. 

“Moths eat skulls.” 

I just learned the word skull. My eyes widened. I took a step back. 

I’ve grown since then both physically and emotionally. 

I still hate moths. They fly their stupid bodies into you and turn to dust when they die. I’m not going to give them a chance to eat my skull.

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I’m Done

My first memory is unpleasant because it involves my granny and nudity. My dad was the youngest of his family. I am the youngest of my family. That means I was doted on like few were. I was granny’s favorite. Some grandmothers get little white dogs and tote them around everywhere. My granny had me, and (at the time) I was little and white. I’m still white. 

She would take me to all sorts of places, but because she was retired and all of her friends were of a certain age, she mostly took me to funerals. If I ever smell flowers, I immediately think of funerals, me in a clip on tie, and my granny. 

Why did I spend so much time with her? My parents both worked and my brothers were both in school. I needed somewhere to go. Legend has it that I was put in daycare, but didn’t last. I was probably discharged for being too violent. Honestly, I was never violent. I was weepy. You could make me cry by looking at me. 

So I had to go somewhere. My granny took care of me every day before I was old enough for school. However, I was a jealous little bugger. I was jealous that my brothers were going to school, and I wasn’t. My granny was a lot like me. A problem solver. 

She bought or borrowed (maybe stole) a school desk. We had “granny school”. She would give me homework. One time in 2nd grade we were doing an assignment where we were supposed to collect leaves from a variety of trees. Child’s play. I was doing leaf books at 4 and a half. 

Back to my first memory. There I was standing with my undies around my ankles alone. I heard myself shout, “Granny, I’m done.” 

Thus begins my memory. I have always prided myself on having a better than average memory. It came in handy at school. My steel trap of a mind starts its illustrious journey by informing my grandmother of a successful poo.

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The Ingrown Toenails of a Young Giant

I believe that I only experienced one negative physical side effect from my size. I have big feet. That’s a bit of an understatement. By the time I was in 8th grade, I wore a size 18. The other 6’8” guys that I knew did not have that big of shoes. I was unique. I had to order my shoes. This was before online shopping. I had to subscribe to a magazine for shoes, note the ones that went to size 18 (which were only 3 or 4 pairs of basketball shoes), and call a 1-800 number. A few weeks later, I could walk outside. 

I played football for 3 years and had only 1 pair of cleats. They were the type of cleats that could be refurbished. I screwed off the numbs on the bottom and replaced them with fresh and much larger numbs. 

The physical misfortune that befell me was toenail related. For years, I had ingrown toenails. Both of the nails on my big toes grew into the flesh of my toe. Everytime I took my socks off, I had red marks on the top of each sock. I bled everyday. 

While the toes did not hurt most of the time, they were extremely tender. If you stepped on my foot, I would howl in pain. It was sharper and more immediately painful than a blow to the family jewels. I would prefer a swift kick to the nuggets over an accidental pace on my foot. Whenever I saw the yellow Gadsden flag with the rattlesnake, I got it. Don’t Tread on Me. 

At first I tried some home remedies. I scraped the middle of my toenails lengthwise with a knife. The idea was to make the nail grow inward. Everyday in 8th grade, I came home, took my bloody sock off, grabbed a knife, and started scraping. 

Here, I think I should remind you that I later completed a Ph.D. 

I was also concerned with infection. I had hydrogen peroxide. I poured it on my toes everyday. It bubbled white. If I think about what life as an 8th grade boy was like, I think about the white foam of hydrogen peroxide on my tender toes. 

Eventually, the problem became so bad that I needed surgery. Outpatient surgery. No anesthesia. My mom took me to my pediatrician. He grabbed some pliers and said, “this is going to hurt.” 

My mom offered her hand for me to hold. I said, “I’ll break your hand.” 

The doc said, “Just hold 2 fingers.” 

After 40 minutes and a lot of pain, he burned part of my cuticle so I’ll never have an ingrown toenail again. The top of my toes are still a bit tender, but I was able to walk across the stage and accept my Ph.D. without a bloody sock.

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5th Grade Football

My mom wouldn’t let my brothers and I play soccer because she thought we’d get hurt. I wanted to use the word “football” in the previous sentence instead of “soccer”, but I’m American. I don’t care that the sport of soccer is played with feet and a ball. When I say football, I mean helmets, pads, and tackling. 

Nevertheless, my mom wouldn’t let us play soccer. She thought the movements in soccer would damage our knees. She was probably right. I know that with my size and weight, I am a prime candidate for knee problems. I’m like a purebred Great Dane. Yet, here I am. Knees as strong as a camel’s. 

I never liked soccer anyway. It was a lot of running and always felt too European. 

By the time I was in 5th grade, I was huge. I was big not just for a 5th grader. I was big for a human. We just moved to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. It’s a suburb of Tulsa and in this part of the country, football ruled. I was recruited as soon as I darkened the door of my elementary school. 

I asked my mom about playing. She said I could. After all, it was safer than soccer. As I entered the field, my shadow crossed over a coach. He slid his clipboard down to hide his excitement and said, “Lineman.” It wasn’t a question. I was a lineman. 

My favorite part of practice was the sled. It was 5 padded dummies in a row. We lined up in front of a dummy, got in a 3 point stance, and hit the dummy with a sustained push. If I was on the end of the sled, I could get the whole thing turned 180 degrees. Evidently, I could push a lot harder than other, normal-sized children. 

I was big, but I was also soft. I had some strength, but I also had a dumb haircut, a baby face, and glasses. I would take my glasses off to put my helmet on and then put my glasses on through the facemask. If I was interested in the ladies, they’d be swooning at the sight. 

Our games were on Saturday mornings. They began with an unforeseen and, in retrospect, odd ritual. Before the game, I had to weigh in. Just me. If I weighed too much, I was not allowed to play with the other children who were, I remind you, my age. Anyone could take one look at my chubby face and know that I was not some teenager trying to pull a fast one. I was just a “big ‘un”. 

I don’t know how close I was, but I always made weight. It didn’t really matter. I was a solid lineman, but even an exceptional lineman doesn’t change the course of the game. If I weren’t so slow, they would have let me do something else. It would take 6 of them to tackle me. The problem was that I was so slow, they could easily get 6 of them to tackle me. I was slower than frozen peanut butter. I was slower than the kid who thought chocolate milk came from brown cows. I was so slow that by the time I got to the showers after the game everyone else was already dry. 

My lasting memory of my first season playing football was the picture we took. I stood in the middle, at least 8 inches taller than every other player. I was also taller than a few of the coaches. My body looked like I do not belong in the same group as all of these children, but my round glasses and pudgy face disagree. My jersey has a big 50 on it. Later, I’d still wear a 50 on my clothes. For a few years, 50 was my waistband.

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I Toad You

As little boys, my brothers and I would play outside all day. Usually they did not let me play with them. They were (and still are) 4 and 5 years older, and I liked playing in the mud. They did let me play with them one time. We had Tonka trucks. These metal trucks were about the size of a dachshund. We also had a paved hill near our house. We put these two assets together and rolled down the hill riding on the Tonka trucks. Good clean fun. 

We moved from that area to a place in Granite City, Illinois. Our house was right next to a warehouse. Across the street from our front door was a solid brick wall. 

One Sunday, we came home from church, and a couple of neighborhood boys were near our house hitting something with baseball bats into the brick wall. My mom thought they were tennis balls. But one thing was unusual. Whatever the boys were hitting stuck to the brick. That’s not tennis ball behavior. 

Frogs. These little hoodlums were hitting live frogs with baseball bats into a brick wall. To say Granite City was a hard place to grow up is an understatement. It is named after a stone, and children kill amphibians in creative ways for fun. 

As if to underline this point, my brothers and I were in the front yard. I sat on the porch in a world of my own. This was usual for me. I had a bad habit of peeing my pants. Usually, I would just hold it for too long. I also wet the bed. I don’t like the term “bedwetter”. Wetting the bed was what I did, not who I was. If I was outside when my bladder failed, I covered my urine escapades with the hose by spraying myself. Then, I would need to change my clothes because they were wet with water and not urine. 

That morning, I was dry from both internal and external sources. My brothers milled about in the front yard. Then a boy on a bike came riding towards us. Without getting off the bike, he punched my brother Matt in the face. We found out that it was a case of mistaken identity. You were better off staying out of our front yard. You’d either be punched or batted into a brick wall. 

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