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The Angry Kid Can't Help it

2011-05-24 - 8:21 p.m.

When I had just learned to read, my mother took every opportunity to buy me books that she thought would convey a great message. She got me one called Flutterby about an awkward Pegasus who mopes around wondering who she is, trying on the various identities of her friends, to no avail. Flutterby ultimately finds herself when she sees her own reflection mirrored back to her in a puddle of water. My own reflection mirrored back to me that my mother was always trying to teach me a lesson of some kind.

"We all have a little Flutterby inside us, right kiddo?" she wrote inside the book.

I was a well liked and pleasant enough kid, with tendencies leaning toward 'bull in a china shop'. At what was supposed to be the mild and temperate age of six, I managed to 'strong arm' a school friend into giving me a gift meant for her mom on her birthday, which she had intended to surprise her with after school. It was a light blue and white thermometer, with silver glitter flowers on it. I wanted it, mainly because it wasn't mine.

She had been given the thermometer for being the only kid in our kindergarten class to remember to put her belongings neatly away into her cubby, where her name "Jenny Bandy" was written in magic marker on top of a strip of masking tape. For this, and for simply being one of the good girls, she often got nice gifts from the teacher. I was sometimes given things too. Three times that month I was given time outs in the corner. My mother and I were also given an invitation to a private parent/teacher conference because I had spit water all over a teacher's aide. She didn't believe my mouth was full, and told me to prove it. Like Flutterby, I was always trying on new identities, this one being a pint-sized pain in the ass.

No I wasn't racking up any noteworthy praise, or gifts, or thermometers, so I saw no choice but to snatch them up. My plan was to tell Jenny I heard her say "Well, shit!"

"Did you hear that, Jenny said pretty please can she have snack time now. She's so cute!"

Personally, I think she was given preferential treatment because she had buck teeth, orange hair and was an only child. Big deal, my Dad trumped that in spades by dying of bone cancer the year before. I didn't know the full story, so I simplified it by telling everyone he fell into a hole. I settled on telling Jenny if she handed over the thermometer, I wouldn't tell her mother about the cursing, which she seemed perfectly fine with. Then she blinked a few times and wiped away a tear with her sleeve, as she pointed the thermometer in my direction. She didn't let go of it right away though, and called my bluff one last time.

"What did - you say would happen if I didn't give this to you?"

"Your mom will have a terrible birthday and life, because you said "well, shit!" the whole day."

I tried to grab it from her. She had a weak grip, but held on.

"I think I only said it one time though."

I could see I would need to pull out a fancy word my mother liked to use on me.

"Jenny, stop your shenanigans, and turn it over!"

It did the trick. I coaxed it right out of her pasty freckled hands and haphazardly shoved it inside the faux furry hood on my parka. We shared a quiet ride together on the bus - me, daydreaming of going to my friend Trudy's house for chicken pot pie later, and Jenny beside me, staring out the window like a zombie who's battery was dying, blinking and clutching her Holy Hobby thermos. I had an identical one, so, hers was of no use to me. To be quite honest, I had no idea I had done any harm to her; my role models were my older brothers, who had varying degrees of success in petty crime up to this point, and Pippi Longstocking, who could eat a box of nails like it was candy, not to mention throw a grown man across the room by picking him up by his pant cuffs. I tried that earlier in the year with a teacher's assistant named Hulda. Hulda only wore men's slacks, and was much tougher looking than the tiny guy my mom had been spending all her time with, named Bruce. I once told Bruce I had a dream that he was a tomato, and I squished him with a pencil. Anyway, after realizing I couldn't so much as lift Hulda's Sasquatchian foot off the ground, much less throw her, I just bit down on her ankle lightly, kind of like a dog would do while roughhousing with a buddy. It wasn't like I was trying to hurt her, I just thought she might have gotten the Pippi Longstocking reference and we could've shared a moment. She screamed down at me, demanding I get my act together and behave, or she would stick me back in the time out corner, or in the trunk of her car.

Shortly after that, my mother brought me the book "Ramona the Pest", presumably to let me know there were other feisty 5 year old girls in the world. She wrote inside the book,

"...but I still promise I'll tell Santa you've been good this year. Love, Mom"

Soon after waving goodbye to Jenny on the bus, I was enjoying a delicious chicken pot pie and Orange Crush soda in front of my friend Trudy's TV. The setting couldn't have been more perfect. No one told me I couldn't have sugar. No one censored my television programming. There was a surplus of violence on the TV and a wad of tin foil replacing the TV antenna. Trudy's hyperactive dogs, Roach and Brandy, left their hair all over the couches and the kitchen linoleum, and no one even thought to clean it up. Trudy's Dad was a pork faced EMT from the midwest, and said things like "Go on and scrub up for dinner now, Trudy Lynn!" and her Mom was a pale petite soccer coach who chain smoked and kept two wooden spanking paddles on the wall, with Trudy and her brother Jimmy's names engraved on them.

Someone knocked at the front door, completely ruining the moment. As it turns out it was my mother, not looking very happy, in a lineup alongside Jenny Bandy and her mom, also not looking very happy. I noticed Mrs. Bandy was similarly orange and bucktoothed like Jenny was, a veritable carbon copy of the girl I could crush with one slight inflection of my voice. I could see where Jenny got her pansyish tendencies from, although Mrs. Bandy was oddly lumpy and had crazy angry hair. I suddenly realized I hadn't been to the bathroom in a few minutes and ran upstairs to the 2nd one that Trudy's family used for dry food storage. Time passed, and I sat on the edge of the tub, which was piled high with boxes of cereals and rice. I thought about the look on my Mother's face at the front door, to my unfinished pot pie on the tray downstairs getting cold, and what we might be having for dessert - then back to my Mother's face again. I went to the door, pressed my ear against it, and, hearing nothing, slid to the floor, hoping they were dukeing it out on my behalf. They weren't.

"Ohell?" my mother called up to me.

You should never disturb someone when they're in the bathroom. Even if they're just sitting there.

"Ohell!"

I noted the change from Ohell as a question, to Ohell as a statement. I opened the door a crack. Roach the dog had followed me upstairs and was just standing there, looking stupid. He stuck his head through and tried to bite the air. I shook my finger at him to scold him, trying not to make any noise, and pushed his face away with my foot, then shut the door again. This is serious, Roach! He started to scratch at it so I hastily grabbed a travel size box of fruit loops from a value pack of a hundred, opened the door and threw it at him.

"What?"

"Do you have Jenny's thermometer?"

I hesitated. Maybe there was a way around this.

"Which thermometer?"

She hesitated.

"The one that isn't yours."

My shenanigans, it appeared, would be coming to a head shortly. I felt something come over me that I had never felt before, which I now know to be extreme embarrassment. Positively sure Santa would be hearing about this.

Then my mother suggested that I come downstairs at once. I picked a book from the top of a stack resting on the toilet tank, and started slowly back down the steps, heavily immersed in it as I walked.

'If the victim can move, breathe or speak, do not perform the hiemlich manoever. As a rule of thumb, ask, are you ok? And wait for the victim to answer before beginning. This is crucial.'

"Would you like to say something to Jenny and Mrs. Bandy, please?.... Ohell?"

Something unfamiliar, like a hot raindrop trickled down my back, leaving me feeling very woozy.

'As a rule of thumb, ask, are you ok? As a rule of thumb, ask, a rule of thumb ask...And wait for the victim to answer before beginning. This is crucial.'

"Ohell."

I looked up from my book and my mother locked eyes with me. I could see Mrs. Bandy's chest moving kind of fast, out of the corner of my eye, but not once did I dare take my eyes off my mother. Nor did I blink.

Then Jenny's mother asked my mother how they might go about getting Mrs. Bandy's thermometer back.

"I know where it is!", I said, springing to life. And I turned and walked right back up the stairs, resuming my psuedo-reading as I walked.

I got to the top of the stairs and quickly scanned Trudy's room, locating my jacket on the bed. I grabbed the thermometer out of my faux parka hood and really took a close look at it for the first time. This stupid stupid thermometer, which had caused me so much trouble, and it didn't even light up or make noise. What was her mother's problem? I tiptoed to the head of the stairs holding the deadbeat gift and thought about what I might encounter going back down there again. My face was hot, and I was very confused. As quietly as I could, I tiptoed back down the hallway, grabbed a hold of the railing and - gently - tossed - the thermometer down the stairs, watching it bounce and clack a few times before it landed loudly on the bottom step, thankfully in one piece.

The next thing I heard was, "She just did what?" and then footsteps, and then quiet. Soon after, the front door opened and closed again, and I felt a cold gush of air for a second. I tiptoed backwards into Trudy's room, gently shut the door, snapped my fingers twice, and became invisible. After hiding in there long enough for any reasonable family to have finished dessert, including mine, unfortunately, my mother came upstairs. I was on the bed, hiding under my coat in a ball. She told me to get up, because we were going home.

I held out my arms to her.

"Carry me."

For my birthday a few weeks later I was given a book called "Never Tease A Weasel", about the importance of being nice.

"There's a bit of bad in the best of us, right babe?" she wrote on the inside cover.

I wasn't sure who she was referring to, or what it had to do with my birthday.

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