We last talked about my father, who I could go on and on about, but he mostly comes into play when I was in my mid-teens. So, who was my primary father figure after my biological father was out of the picture? A tall, black haired, pale-skinned, green eyed, skinny man who loved kung fu and smoking weed.
I didn't know about my stepfather being a weed smoker, but apparently, according to my mom, he was. He was also a fisherman, who mostly just welded metal (boats, oil tanks etc.) and disappeared during the summer to kill thousands of fish for profits pushing into the six-figure range. Those profits split among his crew, amounted to around a year's salary for each of them, and we're talking only spending the summer doing this.
Memories of my stepdad mostly can be found when I lived in my primary childhood home, a flat roofed, 1 acre lot house, right next to a creek in a beautiful, middle-of-nowhere environment. We had goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits and more. The house was 2 bedrooms, but I was provided with a bedroom custom modified for me, as it was originally just a room for the washer, dryer, furnace and water heater. We're talking 9 feet by 5 feet. I somehow fit in that room thanks to a bunk bed being built onto the wall, above half the appliances, by my stepdad. My stepdad was a wood master, he made custom beds for other family members, and made it possible for me to not have to sleep in the front room, which, during the winter months, probably would have been better considering my head rested next to the blazing gas furnace every night.
Before that home, we lived in an apartment building, and before that, a house just down the street from the elementary school where I learned how to sing all fifty American states like it was nothing. I can still, to this day, rap off at least 40 states in under 60 seconds.
I went through a series of being bullied in school. In preschool I was peed on by another boy, and as a result of me reporting this incident to my mom, I was able to have everyone leave the bathroom whenever I wanted to go to the bathroom. Why? Because the bathroom at my preschool had a line of 14 or so toilets without stalls. No privacy, and even at a very young age, I wasn't having it. I hate to say it, but that boy peeing on my leg was probably one of my first memories. That and the powdered milk my mom used to insist I drink instead of real milk due to how poor we were. I remember the chunks of unmixed milk, oh what terrible taste.
But how could we be so poor if my wholesome Christian father was paying child support? Often times, he wasn't.
The only other memory I have from preschool is getting beans stuck in my nose and ear. I remember the sensation of trying to stick hard beans (from crafting projects) in my ear and nose, and sometimes going too far, to the point of my little boy self, panicking.
Do you see what I mean by saying "If something traumatic happened to me as a child I would probably remember it?" Yeah, hard cold uncooked beans. I remember the bean scares.
Regardless, off to kindergarten I went, which I remember none of. I could have been put in a hibernation tank for all I know. Kindergarten was just a non-event experience. First grade was interesting because I went to multiple schools in a short time. I attended one school where someone once screamed "Are you a girl or a boy!", I yelled back angrily "I'm a boy!" very offended by the idea anyone could think I was something else. Another school I went to was where I discovered, while waiting for the bus, what a woman's boobs and vaginas looked like.
At first, I was horrified. As I reached into that recycling dumpster and grabbed the adult magazine out of it, I flipped page after page and saw woman after woman spreading the lips of her crotch to reveal what I could only assume was a horrifyingly dangerous wound.
I wasn't aroused by it, I wasn't curious about anything outside the concept that these women look like their lower half was seriously injured, yet they somehow seemed fine with it, almost as if they were showing off their pending apparent deaths.
There was a feeling that invaded my mind, an overwhelming fascination my emotions had from seeing these images, but I just didn't understand what I was really looking at. How could I?
While we lived in the apartments, my mom told me a neighbor kid had tried to find out if cats really do always land on their feet. That neighbor was supposed to be watching over a cat while the family was away, and they decided to test out their curiosity on the cat. The cat died. What is also sad is the cat didn't even belong to the person who killed them, which means someone else had to suffer the pain of something that wasn't even their fault. The family returned home, and had to accept the fact, the person who was supposed to take care of their cat, caused it to die. I don't recall ever seeing the cat, or the boy that ended the cat's life, but the story my mom told me, haunts me to this day.
To add to the problematic nature of these apartments, one day a neighbor boy and I found a hammer next to what we felt was an abandoned car. Being little boys who just found a hammer, and something to smash that seemed innocent, we ran around, bashing out the car's lights and windows. The car was such a piece of junk that had to be at least 15 years older than anything we had seen. After a while of destroying this car, a man came running out, hollering like his head was on fire. Flash forward to later that night, and I remember my mom crying with her head resting on her arm as she sobbed leaning on the closet door. In her hand? A leather belt. She was beating me with a belt for smashing out the car windows and mirrors. "What am I going to do Greggy?" my mom cried over and over. She was very poor; she did not have the means to pay for the damages.
Oddly, I don't remember the sting of the belt, I just remember her pain. How I felt horrible for making my mom cry, despite her beating me, a very small child, with a belt, I could only think of how sad I felt that she was sad.
After we moved away from the apartments, I vaguely remember being in second grade. I fell in love with my first person ever, I knew almost nothing about her, but apparently, I loved her so much I decided it was important to beat up anyone who flirted with her.
There we both stood on a sunny day, the playground was covered in fresh sawdust, we were by the metal pull up bars, chatting it up, just her and I. At some point I insisted that I loved her and asked her if she loved me. I had no concept of any typical shows of affection in situations where you loved someone, so I just used words. A boy approached us and was seemingly bothering this girl. I asked her if he was bothering her, she didn't speak. He kept nagging and nagging as I tried to talk to her. At some point, I let her know I was about to do something to stop him from bothering her, and I turned to him, without hesitating, I began to pummel him with my fists.
The boy I was now viciously pounding into, who barely provoked me in hindsight, was now screaming and grabbed me by my long hair in hopes of stopping my attack on his face. Now on the ground facing away from him, I swung my fists upward and backward to continue making contact with his face. I was a maniac, and my mom taught me exactly how to be that way.
You see, being bullied was a common problem for me. Why? I was going to poor kid schools, I was a poor kid myself, and poor kids, are often hit by their parents, more often than not, their divorced parents. What do you do when your parents teach you that hitting is ok? You follow their example. That's why I never understood parents who act like spankings are good for their kids. How can you say violence is not the answer, when your actions clearly demonstrate that violence is your default and only answer?
So, as a child, I was a master of beating up the rudest kids who were most always, never trained to fight. My mother trained me when she saw I was getting bullied at a very early age, and as a result, I became a bully of bullies. Almost like a kid cop, ready to pounce on anyone causing a disruption.
My assumed girlfriend had left, completely disappeared in the flailing sawdust as this irritating boy and I battled it out. I was still sitting on the ground swinging up at his face when a teacher began screaming at both of us to stop attacking one another. Once the boy and I were in the principal's office, he began to cry aggressively about how I was "punching (him) like a machine". I was proud of myself then, for being a decent fighter, but now? I see myself as a child who was taught that the solution to your problems is being insane. Not a good lesson.
Despite being tough on the outside, I was still a soft little boy inside. I had a friend who I loved a lot, he was such a dork, but we got along so well. Like having a geeky big bird as a best buddy. On top of my "loving my friends" side, I was easy to scare. I was terrified of the dark and still peed my bed. If you think about it, being beaten as a child by my mom, with a beyond deadbeat biological father as the other half my role models, it really did a number on me. And the other father figure? A pot-head kung fu master, who, you guessed it, also beat me with a belt.
You might assume that I grew up to be a belt-beater myself. As a child I was hit and smacked with hands as well as objects, so why would I not do the same to others? Well, because that's obviously insane and only says, you really don't know what unconditional love is. If you want your kids to grow up, not hitting others, you can't hit them. If you want your kid to not yell at others, you can't yell at them. If you want your kid to be nice to others, you have to be nice to them. It's beyond basic logic. It's so painfully obvious, I can't help but think my parents were morons for the way they raised me.
Yes, my mom had it really hard. Single mom half the time? Raising three kids? Ex-husband a repeatedly accused predator by multiple family members of yours. Not a fair hand to be delt. But none of that gives you the green light to beat your kids.
You could say culture is a reason for parents to do what they do, no, it's not. I have seen so many comedians praise beating their children, and the masses laugh/applaud their statements. Me every time? Sitting there with resting bitch face, in horror that anyone finds beating children funny. If it was a joke, ok, it's a joke, but when people tell you extensive stories of how they beat their own children, you're no longer a comedian on a stage, you're a horrible piece of garbage bragging about being a monster.
So, while my culture still celebrates and condones that behavior, I refuse to take part in it. I don't understand many parents in general, how selfish a lot of them are, and unwilling to sacrifice their own needs for the needs of their offspring, their one job. Even my grandma told me once to pick out a tree branch for her to beat me with, yes, me, a child of not even two-digit age. Talk about a bunch of nuts jobs. I get along with them to this day (my mom and my grandma) but God damn were they whack back then.
After the fight with that boy, he, very unexpectedly, became my first ever fan. He would now say hi to me when he saw me, laugh at my jokes, tell me stories about his life and why there was a really gross buildup of gunk on the backs of his ears. The little blonde boy would say that his father offered him money to get rid of the junk on his ears by putting ointment on it. I kind of wonder now, "Why didn't his dad just put the ointment on?"
The boy I fought with loved to cuss, he loved to rebel against authority, and he was pretty much just another baby Eminem if fate would allow him to grow up. He was a strong kid, a fighter and an independent thinker. Unfortunately, he died a couple years after we became friends. A boy in only 4th grade by then.
It was on a snowy day, he was sledding down a hill, by a road, and his parents couldn't stop what happened as they were either not present, or not physically close enough to stop it. Just like that, a vehicle ended my friends' life on that snowy, tragic road.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. There were not many events in second grade outside the moment where peeing the bed wasn't the only nighttime problem I had. My teacher showed the class a picture (via a VHS video) what it would look like if a human and Dinasaur were merged into one. Naturally, it looked like a horrifying alien. As a result of me, a second grader, being shown this image, I had nightmares for weeks. My mom called into complain, and they promised to not show the image to young children anymore as a result. Common sense, right?
But that's it, that's all I have from my second-grade year. I swear, my novels make a whole lot more connections than my life story.
Onward to third grade, we had a man for a teacher this time, a gray-haired balding fellow who taught me basic things like what 12 x 12 was (144), and what it's like to meet an athletic adrenaline junkie who was destined for death only months away from first seeing him.
What could I possibly mean? One of the students in our third-grade class wanted to bring in someone who had a fun story to tell us. It was a man who spent a lot of his life climbing mountains. The mountain he wanted to climb next? Why, Mt. Everest of course. He promised us, as a class, that he would bring us back gifts from the mountain after summer break. Instead, he died.
Death by then, wasn't too unfamiliar to me. My former bully, now friend, hadn't passed away yet, that was 4th grade, however my grandpa, had. I was only seven years old when I lost one of my coolest family members ever.
I had done a report on him not long before he passed away. He seemed fine at the time. My grandfather was somewhat like a Santa Claus figure. He had beautiful curly white hair, a great white beard, and perfect old man glasses that he used to read the paper with. At his old age, he still somehow had a very strong body. By far one of the most seemingly physically fit people in my family.
My grandpa liked his coffee black with a ton of sugar added, and whenever we asked him if we could have a cookie, or if he could do us a favor he would ask "Are you, my friend?" My middle sister being the horrible person she is, half kidding, always told my grandpa "NO!" when he asked if she was his friend. My heart hurt every time she did that and I panicked a little, feeling the words soar like daggers into the heart of my grandpa. Just like with my mom crying when I vandalized that vehicle thinking it was abandoned, I feared for the hurt others might feel in general and hated the idea of them feeling the same pain I was so familiar with.
I hated knowing that cat had died, especially in the way it had, being flipped on their back. I hated ever seeing my mom cry, and I hated seeing my grandpa get a "No" whenever he asked my sister if she was his friend. I just hated it all. I wanted everyone to be happy, and to be nice to each other, and yet, I seemed to make a special exception for people who were bullies, attacking them when I saw them bothering or harming others.
A hero complex since the day I could lift my fists.
The school assignment I was given, specifically for reporting what my grandpa's smoking habits were, went well. He told me he had been smoking since he was 10 years old. I recall putting down 47 or 57 years of smoking down on my report. Not long after that report, he became very ill.
My grandpa lost the ability to urinate. My mom told me that essentially his body was "peeing inside of itself". He lost the ability to eat foods properly in general. He shriveled up in a short time and was wheelchair bound with an oxygen tank now accompanying him wherever he went. Toward the end, despite not being religious, he decided to start going to church. What is the harm right? My grandpa would still try to smile when we were around him, but we all knew, things were looking downright horrifying for him. He no longer looked like the former paratrooper boxer we all knew and loved. He died a near skeleton, in a bed fixed up for him in my grandma's front room. He died slow, in pain, but at the very least, with his kids around to watch him go, reminding him that they loved him.
When I see people smoking cigarettes? They just don't understand. They simply have no idea the slow, painful death they are playing chicken with.
Regardless, the Everest man, who also died because he had no real concept of his own mortality or what the risks meant? His death cast a horrifyingly dark shadow on the beginning of our fourth-grade year, which I'll talk more about next chapter.
I hope you enjoyed this writing so far, despite how dark it truly was. That's the sad thing about a lot of people, especially those of us who are unsuccessful in many ways. We can't help but focus on the bad, and it kills us, inside, and out.
I wish my mind would have recorded all the good things in my life. I wish more of my memories were about sunny days and great video games, but what almost always first comes to mind, are the people I loved and lost, and what lurks in the dark corners of my childhood. The invisible half Dinasaur monsters hiding in my room, the child-beating monsters in my house and the worst monster of all, death.