Life's Little Lessons

I remember a string of little lessons that whacked me around the beginning of second grade. None of them were major life events, like attempted murder or gang warfare, but each little lesson taught me that my reality and my world view were alien to others.

I often underwent fugue states in those days. I would be walking along and suddenly find myself two blocks further down the road with no memory of the intervening walking. Some of these hiccups in consciousness turned out later to be Alex slipping in and out. But some of them never got any explanation. It wasn't until I was ready to start 3rd grade that I really began to experience consciousness as a continuous state, and came to expect it to remain so.

Somehow, it never even occurred to me that other people didn't experience disconnected consciousness the way I did. The lesson that made it clear to me happened one day when I went to visit my friend Charles, the wood eater. I was outside the door to his house when I entered a fugue state. I regained consciousness in the kitchen of Charles's house. In front of me was a very pissed off Charles's Dad, who was demanding to know how I got in. I told him the truth. I didn't know how I got in. One minute I was outside, the next minute I was inside.

Charles's Dad said that was a crock. I had to know how I got in. I was lying, he said. He called my parents, who had to come and get me. He treated me like a criminal while we waited for them to come. He told me and my parents that if it ever happened again he'd call the MPs.

Another lesson was the Marble Game. I had loads of marbles because my Father would buy small bags of 10 or a dozen for me now and then, and they added up. I never played marbles though. I didn't know how.

A new kid I got to know told me he'd show me how to play marbles. So I got my marbles out and he played marbles with me. It was one of those deals where every time I thought I was getting the hang of it a new rule would be announced, and I'd find out I'd gone out-of-bounds, or gone upsies or downsies, or some idiotic thing, and another marble would go to the other kid's side.

Finally my mother said my guest had to go, it was time for dinner. I started collecting up my marbles, and my marble instructor said, "Hey, what are you doing? I won those!"

Through events like that I learned that boys are from Mars, girls are from Venus, and I'm from Earth, where we don't expect people to read minds. How was I supposed to know we were playing for the marbles? He never said so! I screamed foul so loud he thought he was going to get in trouble, and ran off.

[Below: After that I couldn't be interested in games of marbles, but I still appreciate the art of it. Photo by Sam Fentress, see larger version.]

Then there was the rabbit incident. The rabbit was a half-inch plastic representation of a rabbit meant for a charm bracelet, which I had found somewhere and adopted. I carried it loose in my pocket and took it out from time to time and talked to it. His name was "Rabbit." He may have been related in my mind to Crusader Rabbit. Or not. But he was definitely one small increment away from imaginary friend toward real friend, by virtue of having a physical presence, albeit tiny and inanimate.

A kid named Roger started hanging with me. I thought of him as Roger Silver Dollar, because his hair was mostly light brown but he had a patch of silver hair the size and shape of a silver dollar on the back of his head. Roger was very pushy and domineering. I actually felt sorry for him, because it seemed to me that his urgent need to have his way all the time was sad. He wasted a lot of his own energy getting other people in line. I tried to help by humoring him, and always doing things his way.

I drew the line at Rabbit however. He said Rabbit was stupid. He said Rabbit wasn't real and doesn't really talk to me, so I should get rid of him. I said I didn't care if he was real, I still liked him. Roger said you can't like something that isn't real. I said that must be wrong, because I do.

Finally one day when I took Rabbit out to look at him, Roger snatched him out of my hand and threw him down a sewer drain.

I was in such tears over it, my Mother called Roger's Mother to demand an apology. Instead of saying she was sorry, Roger's Mother said he had done me a favor. It was just a piece of plastic, she said. I needed to be made to be realistic.

So I learned that there are human beings who detest imagination so much that they will destroy anything that gets its life from it.

These people called themselves Christian. Roger told me Jesus was the True Son of God, and he wasn't dead, but was resurrected, and he talked to him every night when he said his prayers. He knew Jesus was real because the Bible told him so.

It occurred to me there'd be no hope of retaliating by shoving Jesus down a sewer drain, 'cause he'd just come back up after three days in the sewer. The Christians have got their imaginary friend rigged so you can't hang him, drown him, or shoot him.

Too bad. Invulnerability is stunting.

Social Development

My relationships in grade school took an abrupt new direction when I finally learned to tie my own shoes. It was sometime into November, the weather was getting chilly, when the whole chasing the rabbit through the hole clicked.

Immediately, I told Dave I didn't want to be in his gang anymore, and I hoped he wouldn't mind. I was really getting tired of standing along the sidelines watching the other gang members harass someone. Besides, Dave had annoyed me by telling me that my imaginary friend George wasn't real. I knew he wasn't real. That's what "imaginary" means. Duh. But he didn't have to rub my face in the fact that my best friend wasn't real.

To Dave's credit, I wasn't given a goodbye beating. A lot of gang leaders would have arranged one. Maybe he was too new to the business. Maybe by the time he was a teenager and more experienced he would have learned to incorporate those little finesses that define gangdom to the connoisseur. When he wasn't in jail.

Not being part of the dominant gang did mean that my lunch began to be stolen from me regularly. Not by the old gang members, Dave wouldn't allow that. But by other kids that would have stolen my lunch before but had been afraid of Dave's guys.

On the other hand, girls liked me more. I was independent. I went my own way. I didn't have to come running when Dave called. I could tie my own shoes.

Meanwhile, Kathy, the wife-to-be who was placed in second grade, got put in a different class that took a separate lunch time, so we now never saw each other at school. The move had something to do with her being a disciplinary case. I don't recall if she was put back into the other first grade class or what. My parents claimed they knew it was bound to happen -- that was why they didn't let me skip a grade. But I was a disciplinary problem, too!

Anyway, I was therefore lonely for female company. And, at that time, I had no abstract concept of faithfulness. I could be engaged to marry Kathy, that didn't mean I couldn't kiss and hug anybody else. I mean, it was just kissing and hugging. I wasn't marrying any of them. If they'd let me and I knew how, I could have had intercourse with them and it wouldn't have occurred to me that I was cheating on Kathy in any way. The only way I could violate a trust was to promise myself in marriage to another girl.

So I spent more and more time with the girls, getting to know them, and asking for kisses and hugs. Even after I told them I was promised in marriage to another, very few girls turned me down.

An unfortunate incident occurred. A new girl arrived who was gorgeous. I hit up on her at a recess. I got so wrapped up in flirting with her I didn't notice the first warning bell to end recess. By the time the second bell rang I was sucking her face and had a hand halfway up her thigh, and without looking around said, "That's just the warning, we still have five more minutes." Then, after what I thought was five minutes more, but was possibly closer to thirty, I peeled myself away and looked around expecting to see some other stranglers, but there were none.

I was late getting in from recess often, but never this late, and never with a disheveled girl in tow. When we tried to sneak into the classroom the teacher caught us, screamed liked she'd seen a nest of rats, and dragged us to the principal's office, who yelled at me more, threatening to call in my parents.

Apparently they suspected us of fluid exchanges, we'd been so late. I didn't know what the hell they were going on about. I had done everything I could think of to do with her, and none of that was what they were on about, so I wasn't able to confess anything more.

Finally the principal calmed down and deposited us back in classroom. I felt terrible for having ruined my new friend's first day in the class by dragging her down to my level of delinquency.

The principal did call my parents and told them to talk to me. I had to face the same weird questions over again from them. It wasn't quite so bad, because they had trouble with the idea that I shouldn't be liking girls so much.

The result of it all was that I lay low for about two weeks and thought carefully about my previous behavior. I concluded after long deliberate consideration that I hadn't done anything wrong but that I should be more systematic in the future. I decided to see if I could kiss every girl in my first grade class by the end of the year without getting caught.