My first real mode of personal transportation was my tricycle. It
was the biggest trike in the neighborhood and when I rode it, I was the
envy of all my friends and some of my enemies.
Sometimes, Julie, my
younger sister, hitched a ride on back. Together, we were a ferocious
duo–cruising the hood, looking for action.
Julie had a fuzzy head
full of tight curls. As a boy living in a ‘man’s’ world, full of vice
and intrigue, where every corner and shadow there lurked a new
adventure, Julie was my pal. It didn't occur to me that she was a
feminine creature until later in life. She could run, throw, and yell
as good as most boys I knew.
The trike had a triple-sized wheel in
front, which made it twice as fast as a normal ride. Peddling hard, I
could cruise as fast as a grown man could trot–and maybe a bit faster if
he was fat.
Things happen in our lives that define us and force
change in our psyches that linger for years, if not a lifetime.
Seemingly innocuous events occur and in a flash, we are changed.
Sometimes these life-altering events reduce us to cowering whelps,
afraid of our own shadows.
One day, I rode my trike down to the
weed field that grew near our house. All the kids in the neighborhood
gathered there at times throughout the day for no apparent reason. I
could see Mikey down there and I figured I’d go see what he was doing.
Mikey was my mentor in adventure. No adult rules ever stopped him from
accomplishing his day’s quota of ‘fun.’ I wanted to be like him.
He
was also my protector–as an older brother should be. He kept me from
getting ganged-up on by the older kids down the street. It was a known
fact that he was the only one privileged to beat me up–nobody else was
allowed that privilege.
One time I caught him at a kid’s house, watching Dark Shadows, a
show mom forbade us to watch. I came in just as a scary woman fell down
a flight of stairs and died in a heap at the bottom. “No wonder mom
said we couldn't watch this stuff,” I thought. “It has scary people and
dangerous staircases!”
“Jeff, if you tell mom, I’ll beat the
daylights outta you!” Mikey warned. I've kept it a secret for over
forty years, till the writing of this story.
In the weed field,
Mikey was in a heated argument with a girl that lived in a house just
down the street. Suddenly the girl said she was going home to get a
knife so she could cut Mikey’s head off! That really scared me. However,
Mikey, a regular viewer of Dark Shadows, was not afraid of scary things.
When
the girl came back a few minutes later, she was wielding a butter
knife. The sun glistened off the blade as she held it, poised to plunge
it deep into my older brother. He stepped up, grabbed the weapon out
of her hand, and threw it far, far away, into the mass of weeds growing
in the field. A steady flow of swearing and threats flew out of the
girl’s mouth as she retreated down the road toward her house. Her last
vile threat was,“I'm gonna tell my dad, and he is going to get a bigger
knife and cut off all your heads!” She sounded convincing and I
believed her.
In an adult world also populated by a huge number of
kids, shades of grey tend to merge into an otherwise black and white
existence–a sometimes frightening world from the perspective of a
child. I had a tendency to view my world in black and white. Up to
that moment, no grey had crept in. Either people were good or they were
bad. Church people were good; Hippies were bad.
Suddenly, it
occurred to me that an adult, whom I, until that point, perceived as a
good person, might actually be a bad man and even want to kill me. That
adolescent epiphany had a profound effect on my psyche and almost
immediately it became a phobia that would haunt me for the next seven
years or so.
Fact is, I didn't even know that girl’s dad. I saw
him around once in a while and he didn't look like a ferocious child
killer, but now I wasn't so sure. And I wasn't about to take any
chances. For the rest of the time I lived in Boise, I stayed away from
that man–and all men who weren't my dad.
From then on, until I
reached about 12 years old, I refused to sleep overnight at friend’s
homes. I played at friends’ houses, but when their dads came home, I
fled, literally. The more brusque and rowdy a ‘dad’ looked, the more
terrified of him I became. In Salmon, Idaho, a few years later, my
friend, Dan’s dad was a logging truck driver–who smoked. I wouldn't go
near him and made a clean get-away everyday when he arrived home. Dan
was confused and a bit angry when I wouldn't play at his house
sometimes. How could I tell him that I was afraid his dad was going to
cut off my head?
Mom and dad were confused. They wanted me to be
sociable. They had no idea of that deep and profound fear surging
through my being. I had a phobia and nobody figured it out. Although
‘phobia’ was not in my vocabulary, I knew what fear was and it was
debilitating. I was also embarrassed and that made me timid.
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