Ok... I did a little bit of editing on that last one so it might be a little easier to understand now. I remember reading Stephen King's non-fiction book "On Writing" (yes, I've read EVERYTHING by Stephen King, most of it twice) where he talks about the "work" part of writing, and something about how he doesn't do it at night. I see why... I couldn't sleep for a couple hours after writing all that yesterday, my brain was just going and going and going... but I don't get much choice here & now, so there it is! Hopefully 5 hours of sleep last night and a couple beers tonight will assist with sleeping... Maybe I should write that as a disclaimer? I had no more than three beers in the process of writing tonight's blog post. There. My claim is dissed. =)
So I left off at Kennydale and in the Tiffany housing projects. I was getting old enough that I was starting to understand that what was going on wasn't really right. Some of the specifics I remember are cleaning up large puddles of vomit off of 26 stairs after a big party night. Another party night I came down to several nekkid people passed out on the floor of the living room surrounded by some nasty party leftovers... pipes for several different smoke-able drugs, booze bottles all over, a funky smell that I now associate with middle school boy locker rooms and the bathrooms at dance clubs. In general though, I enjoyed that time of my life. It was exciting there! Cops arresting neighbors weekly, the blatant segregation of ethnicities into different blocks, running into blocks where you didn't belong and upsetting the neighbors, 4th of July was BLAST (haha I'm punny!). The whole neighborhood would save up for the entire year to throw away hundreds of dollars on the beer and fireworks that night! The next day all of us kids would go outside and find all the leftovers, what the Army calls UXO (unexploded ordinance). We'd gather it up and light off what we could and jury rig the rest to blow up. We all got our rotten fruits from the fridge and blew things up, one year I remember someone left a TV on the street for a garbage pick up and we could NOT blow that damn thing up!
I think if you're a normal functioning adult and/or a parent you might understand my slight, yet scathing sarcasm here (HOLY SHIT I'M LUCKY TO HAVE ALL MY DAMN FINGERS!!!!!!!!!!). I would NEVER allow Sam to do the things I did there. In fact I would probably actually beat the crap out of him and ground him for a month!! Better that than blowing off two fingers (no, I probably wouldn't beat the crap out of him, but I sure would want to! Scaring me like that!)! So needless to say, while I may have enjoyed myself, the potential for things to go horribly wrong was there on many different levels. I don't know why, but I always made the choice to do what was right or what was challenging, and not necessarily what was easy. I do that even today, much to Tina's dismay =). I have so many students that I remember that didn't make the same choices I did, and now when even a nice, hard working guy like me (with a Master's Degree!) finds it tough to get a job, they regret their decisions.
Back on track there Sterne... So these good times came to an end when my Mom started dating this fine gentleman named Dave Pudwill. I was in 4th grade and that year I got straight A's in school (and my pogo stick record was in the 700's)! Pudwill. I say "fine gentleman" with that scathing sarcasm again. Pudwill was a prick. I tend to generally think positively of most human beings and find what good I can and do my best to accept the rest of that person without judgement. I do this consciously and often with much effort. There are few people that I generally and wholly dislike. With that said, I did not like this person. So there are some things that I am not comfortable sharing, because it's not really about me, but suffice it to say that eventually, it came to this, Mom woke up me and Heidi late one night and told us to grab a bag of stuff, we were leaving in 5 minutes. This was summer after 4th grade, before 5th. I was old enough to stay up late and watch late night Cinemax (pirated, of course...) and know what it meant (Cinemax in the 80's, c'mon...you know what I'm saying right?), old enough to tell Mrs. Taclay, my 4th grade teacher, that my Mom was doing drugs. Old enough to call CPS on my own Mom, and old enough to get up everyday make my own breakfast and get to school (everyday, on my own, you damn Fort kids). I was old enough to know that when Mom woke us up, something was SERIOUSLY wrong. She didn't think anything of it about making me clean up her vomit, her party shrapnel, do the shopping on my own, put myself to bed and get myself up in the morning, catch the bus to school, decide of my own accord to go to church and bible study, those weren't big things. If this woman is waking me up, some bad shit just went down. Dave Pudwill was shot in the head multiple times outside of our apartment. Heidi and I didn't see this nor did we suffer any immediate consequences. At the time, I thought it had to do with drugs. Now, as an adult, I know why, but then, it was just more chaos. That night we stayed at one of my Mom's ex-boyfriends apartments a couple miles away. I woke up the next morning to this dude completely nekkid passed out on his floor while my sister and I slept on his couch. All I could think to do was to keep Heidi asleep, cover him, and then wake him up when Heidi woke up.
Wow I'm getting really angry right now. I guess I hadn't processed this as much as I'd thought.
I hadn't planned on making a part three, but I think I need to finish this chapter and stop for the night... That week my Mom dropped us off for our weekend with Dad and his soon-to-be second wife Toni. When she dropped us off, Mom said something to my Dad to the effect of "I can't do this, I'm going to rehab, here are the custody papers and they're yours until I can handle this again." That's not what Dad tells me she said, but I know how that dude can exaggerate... So that's my best guess. Whatever the case, Heidi and I got out of the pan into the fire. It was summer of 1988. I was 10 and Heidi was 5.
Time to finish beer number three tonight. Sheesh!
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