Some here know, I have been working on a book that is mostly a collection of small stories to be finished by the fall. After talking with the people who are helping me edit and compile things together, I'm going to take some of the rough galleys about about every three weeks post an excerpt for feedback.
So, before we get to comments on typos, etc. remember I'm re-keying this, and most of these haven't been back in front of an editor yet. Just first draft stuff. But I thought it would be a good way to run a sounding board and play with some of the content that they enjoyed and give people a sample.
Kissing A Turtle Doesn't Get Girls (The Lament of a 5 Year Old)
I have never grown to trust adults. I think we got off on a bad foot when my concerns as a kindergartner were so quickly dismissed with "it's not that big of a problem". I knew then it was a lie and decades later I can tell you it's still a lie.
Living in the country, anytime classmates came to visit they would have to drive out to us, the nearest grocery store was 10 Miles away, and there was nothing around us but dirt roads and woods. So when my mother informed us that a classmate of mine was coming over I wasn't that excited at first, but when she told me who it would be, I was instantly on high alert.
To say Serena was attractive was an understatement. Now, when you're five years old the qualities that a young boy finds attractive are a bit different. She had long blond hair, true... but she also had all of her teeth. As far as a young boy is concerned, a 5 year old girl with all of her teeth, no gaps might as well be a supermodel, as though the Charlies Angel's came into my classroom and sat down next to me.
I had been working hard at getting to second base for a few months already with this girl. Just so we can be clear, the base system for kindergarten is different. First base is being able to stand next to each other without getting punched or pulling hair. Second base is holding hands, third base is getting a kiss.. and ah, a home run.
If you could get a girl to put a crayola drawing of the two of you on the class post-it board holding hands, you my friend, were a legend. I would be in sixth grade before people would stop thinking a classmate was the midwest lothario because somehow he had managed to have two separate girls draw pictures of him holding hand with them and publish it in front of a classroom.
With Serena though, I was prepared to take some chances. When you're in the country though and nothing is around, how do you impress a girl? I spent the morning pretending I had a real lack of interest.. I mean, girls blech I told my mother. It's OK, just show her around the mountain. Here's some binoculars show her nature.
Now at this point in history one of the few shows we watched as a family was Omaha's Wild Kingdom every Saturday. Those guys sure seemed.. manly. Yes, the binoculars and a walk around the country would be awesome. I could show her my unbelievable command of wildlife. It would be impressive. And by the time we walked back to our house, we'd be rounding second and I could just picture a crayola drawing of me on the post it board with the only girl in my class who had every one of her teeth, no gaps. I can still see it in my mind and with excited joy I picked out my clothes to wear to show off my unbelievable command of the hostile environment of the Ozark mountains and my own backyard. Hell, I might walk her down the hill and show her the deep ditch where there were occasionally crawdads. If THAT didn't impress a girl, then I had no idea what would.
When her family came to stop and talk business with my parents - about something I could care less about - my devious plan to show off moved into full steam. "Show her around, treat her nice". Oh of course! That was always the plan. We walked outside and I drew up the courage to tell her: we should see nature. I used almost exactly those words, because I had stolen them from the man who hosted Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, and he had both a mustache and silver hair.. and he MUST have been a guy with great luck with the ladies. I'm not sure why I thought that at the time, but it made complete sense in my head as a five year old.
We started walking outside and I introduced her to our pet dogs. "Oh, that's great" and she told me she had a pet boa constrictor - a snake! Holy cow, she just upped the ante on me. And constrictors hugged people, I knew that from the TV show. While hugging isn't directly on the base system, you've got to figure in my mind that it was somewhere between second and third, and by goodness, if she had a snake who hugs and she likes animals, then my mother must be telepathic.. the hazy thought of a crayola drawing of my image in Mrs. Brown's room was becoming not so hazy. Hell, by Christmas break, it would be a lock.
When you know a young girl really loves nature, it's sometimes hard to show how much you can appreciate it. Her love of a snake was exciting, but the only snake I had seen up close were rattlesnakes that my dad killed with a shovel or a gun. This was going to be a hard girl to impress.
But at the bottom of our hill was a deep ditch, and in that ditch would be my Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Maybe on that show they caught big fish or dealt with alligators but I'm five - a big crawdad would have to be impressive enough. We walked down to the ditch and we went at least two hundred yards and no one spit on me, punched me or started crying. This was going perfectly. I had her right where I wanted, this would seal the deal.
As we drew closer to the ditch I remembered that it had rained quite a bit recently and realized that the gurgling of water I could hear would be the ditch. Damnit. My chance of getting crawdads would be hard, and there was no way I was going to walk out into the water, if my mom found my shoes got wet I would never hear the end of it. And getting a girl dirty wouldn't do. And then I saw it: a turtle! There it was, trying to climb out of the ditch and struggling to get up the embankment. Holy cow, I could rescue an animal. How fantastic would rescuing an animal be? It would be awesome!
I rushed down and warned her: be careful of the water, don't get wet. Damn, I had the Wild World spiel down. I reached down and grabbed the turtle and brought it back. "So he's going to be safe now!" She beamed a giant smile. Holy cow, I had just become a superhero. She reached out and grabbed my hand.. second base! Second base! Holy hell, I had this in the bag!
But sometimes, you just press your luck a bit too far. "I love animals, it's why I love living here." And so help me goodness to this day, I have no idea what inspired me to turn the turtle around and try to kiss it.
Let me just say: turtles do not kiss the same way a person does. In a matter of seconds, a box turtle was hanging from my lip, blood gushing over it's shell while I began screaming and flailing. The turtle held fast, swinging wildly side by side as I ran around in circles trying to get it to let go. Searing pain was coursing through my lip and face and in my mind the crayola picture on the kindergarten wall was catching fire and burning up.
She began screaming wildly, flailing around with me as we ran to the house where my mother caught us running up the hill: "Why is there a turtle on you! How did this happen!"
"He tried to kiss a turtle! He tried to kiss a turtle!"
Oh my goodness. I had just went from the most manly 5 year old adventure man to a lunatic who kisses turtles and gets bit. Her mother was done with the business and they left while I sat on the porch with a turtle hanging from my top lip, screaming in pain as we tried to come up with a way to get rid of the turtle without killing it or cutting my lip off.
We only had party line phones then, so when my mother called an aunt to find out, everyone on the mountain instantly knew: "oh that boy, a turtle kisser."
Shame and humiliation. It was only pickle juice and a cotton ball that would free a turtle from my lip. And now I had the weekend to think about Monday in Mrs. Brown's class.
At this point, all I could do was hope for something else to happen. This is the other thing that adults don't quite get about little kids. Schadenfreude is practiced best by small kids. Maybe as adults you forget, but when you're a kid who's just been humiliated, nothing would bring you any level of joy more than someone else screwing up more than you so you can divert the attention.
But diverting the attention away from being a turtle kisser, that was going to be a pretty big ask and I knew it. Even though every adult will lie to you and tell you it is not true, your long ride on a school bus while you wait to see the reaction of being a turtle kisser is your first real run in with existential angst. What am I doing here? Do I really want to be here? The world has ended as far as you know it. Damn you, Marlin Perkins. I was wrong about you, you never had a girl draw up a crayola drawing of you. I bet you were that kid who kept tapping the glass on fish tank who doesn't seem to bathe that often. That's you , Marlin Perkins. You misled me. I couldn't sing or dance but my sister was apparently right, if only I had played disco and tried more Saturday Night Fever moves. Hell, I looked more like Andy Gibb than Marlin Perkins. All I had to look forward to was to see if any girl would even stand near me while I had a big scar on my lip where a turtle punched through. There is no way other children are talking about you, the kid who had a turtle hanging from your lip if instead you had been dancing. Turtles never get anywhere near your face if you're dancing.
I would have clawed a hole in the bottom of the schoolbus to not attend school that day. My mind kept turning and I kept thinking that all I needed was for someone else to have screwed up worse than I did. But when you are in kindergarten that's a big ask. I either needed someone to have a potty accident and poop their pants in class or I needed the building to catch fire. Either one would do. It would be two decades before I'd take German, but my mastery of schadenfreude would match any other five year old anywhere in the world.
The morning began miserable enough, girls snickered at me and talking still hurt. Plus, having a big scab on your lip was definitely not a way to attract a girl. And when you have eyes only for the top prize in your class - a girl with all of her teeth - why, all of your hopes were fading pretty quickly. I hadn't yet mastered how to work injury into sympathy, that was beyond me. I just really needed someone to do something stupid. And the clock was ticking down.
An hour before lunch, Marty - we later called him strange Marty - began fooling around with the record player in our classroom. This is long before we had protective shields on outets so kids could just plug and unplug things on their own when teachers were out of the room. Marty had a paperclip. And announced he was going to shove a paperclip into the outlet. It was no secret that he, too, had eyes on the girl I was after - I mean, who didn't want to be with a girl who had all her teeth? But I knew that shoving anything into an outlet was a bad idea. I learned that a year earlier when I nearly set the house on fire in a similar attempt. Ok, this is going to be good I thought. I didn't think about him dying or getting seriously injured, but I knew that this would be far dumber than kissing a turtle and he would do it in front of everyone. I couldn't ask for more. I could have rushed him and told him not to do it. But I didn't remember getting hurt from trying this at my house, I just remember a bunch of sparks. This could be good.
A shower of sparks came out of the outlet where our record player was plugged in when he shoved the power cord in forcing down the paperclip. Lights in our room went off and then came back on. In an instant, Mrs. Brown was back in our classroom. Marty was fine, but his right thumb was almost totally black and it stayed that way for a day or two.
Hot damn. October 1980 wasn't going to be all bad. I wouldn't have too long to live down being a turtle kisser. No one would care about something they didn't see. I could pretend it was something else eventually. Who would care. Marty had almost burned the classroom down in front of us with a shower of sparks and teachers screaming.
I couldn't have asked for more. I was over the moon giddy.