Lancing at more old boils
Stories not told before, at least not in this forum. You'll notice a certain theme, which is another way of saying this gets kind of heavy and repetitive. (Want more? Really? Okeh, here y'go, bars on the windows and everything: see here.)
One day in September 1981, I started kindergarten at Village Heights Elementary School on Colorado Boulevard in Englewood, Colorado. I was in Ms. Betty Lessig's class in Room 21, which had aqua low-loop carpeting and a yellow exterior door and shared a common wall with Room 22, that was Ms. Shirley Meyer's music classroom with pea green low-loop carpeting. The principal was Bob Morton, his secretary was Doris Johnson; the gym teacher was Rich Messerich, the lunch lady was Dorothy Wall, teachers' aides included Ms. Honn (or Hahn), Carla Hopp, and Arla Ayers; my school bus route was #2, and the bus—a 1975 IH Loadstar 1800 manual chassis with 66-passenger body by Blue Bird—was driven by Ed Simmock.
Why do I mention all these details and names? Well, because the librarian was Mrs. Burz. That was how her name sounded to me when she introduced herself to us on that first day of kindergarten during our walking tour of the school: "Mrs. Burz", or possibly "Burse". She didn't write it, so I didn't know how to spell it. But that didn't matter when I came home and told my mother about my day; I didn't have to spell it, all I had to do was pronounce it the way it had been spoken: "Missus Burz".
Except that was a terribly wrong answer. My mother's face did its dangerous thing and she towered over me and hollered "THAT'S WRONG! STOP SAYING 'BURZ'! HER NAME IS NOT MISSUZ BURZ! IT'S MISSUZ BURRIS! THERE IS NO 'BURZ', THAT'S NOT EVEN A REAL NAME, STUPID! [Your 3rd-grader sister] DEBBY ALREADY TOLD ME ABOUT HER, AND HER NAME IS MISSUZ BURRIS!"
I was terrorised, humiliated, and reduced to tears very similar to the ones early the next school year: one day I opened my lunch bag to find that my Fruit Roll-Up's laminated foil wrapper had been torn open and only half a Fruit Roll-Up lay within. The 1982 Tylenol scare was very fresh news, and I had been very carefully taught to pay close and skeptical attention to food wrappers, to watch out for tampering. Though that said, "carefully" isn't really quite le mot juste; mother explained that a bad person had put poison in Tylenol pills, then returned them to the store and other people had bought them, taken them, and died. That's why it was so important from now on to be careful and observant and skeptical. It all made sense to me except one part: We'd had a bottle of Tylenol in use since before, didn't that mean our bottle was OK? Her face did the dangerous thing. "WHY DON'T WE LET YOU BE THE ONE TO TRY THEM AND FIND OUT, STUPID?!" she screamed. "GOT A FEVER? WE'LL GIVE YOU SOME TYLENOL WITH CYANIDE!"
Oh.
Anyhow, back to the lunchroom in 1982: Half a Fruit Roll-Up instead of a whole one. Wrapper torn. Obviously this factory-sealed package had been altered, as had its content. It looked suspicious to me, and I couldn't explain it. So although I liked Fruit Roll-Ups (and this one had been strawberry, my favourite), I discarded it. Y'know that song about the bumble bee? "I'm <verbing> up my baby bumble bee—won't my mommy be so proud of me", et cetera? Well, that was me: I had remembered the warning, applied it in an applicable situation, and taken appropriate action. I rode the bus home—that year it was a 1976 Ford F700 automatic chassis with 66-passenger Blue Bird body, number 1117, driven by Bob Short—and told my mother what I'd done.
Oops. Wrong! Dangerous face thing. "WHAT?! WHY DID YOU THROW IT AWAY?!! IT WAS PERFECTLY FINE!!"
"Be…cause I thought it might…be contaminated?"
"YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT WORD MEANS, DO YOU?! DO YOU?!!! YOU TELL ME WHAT 'CONTAMINATED' MEANS!! YOU TELL ME RIGHT NOW!!"
I was reeling under the sudden attack, but obviously I'd done something stupid and wrong or I wouldn't be in such deep trouble. Even though I was only six, experience had already taught me the best thing was to go along and avoid digging myself any deeper: "I…I don't know."
YOU DON'T KNOW. THERE WAS ONLY ONE FRUIT ROLL LEFT! I CUT IT IN HALF AND GAVE HALF TO YOU AND HALF TO DEBBY, YOU DOLT!!", she screamed.
The only reply I could muster was "Wh…what's a 'dolt'?".
That was not the only time my ignorance of a word or name would blunt some of the impact of her attack. For some strange reason, I found comfort in food, and I ate too much. Too much "snack" (junk) food, and too much of the garbage they served at the school cafeteria. That and my ineptitude in sports meant by third grade I had developed a conspicuous paunch. Mother towered over me, hollering "LOOK AT YOU, FATTY! YOU LOOK LIKE ARCHIE BUNKER!"
Wh…who's Archie Bunker?
As I grew older, though, that shield stopped working; she knew I knew exactly what she meant when she called me a thorn in her side, a pebble in her shoe, a constant annoyance. And the hollering wasn't always the extent of it, either. I was about 11 or so, at home alone for the evening, when I fi nished my homework and decided to install a replacement upper heat element in the kitchen oven. She'd bought the element at the GE appliance parts center a few days before—at that time it would cost about sixteen dollars—but hadn't had time to do anything about it. I remember deliberately choosing between parking in front of the TV set for the night or doing the oven repair, and deciding that the oven repair would constitute participation in keeping the house in shape without being asked. I did the job correctly and neatly. Even put away all the tools. Mother came home and I showed her what I'd done (you'd think I'd have learnt by then, but no).
Wrong. Dangerous face. "YOU IDIOT! I HADN'T DECIDED WHETHER TO FIX THE OVEN OR GET A NEW ONE!!" She chased me up the stairs with a belt. I was duly terrorised; I ran in my room, slammed the door, called the police and told them she was going to hit me with a belt. They came, two of them in a Dodge Diplomat cruiser, talked to mother and then came upstairs and ordered me not to touch appliances in the house without permission. One of them commented on his way out about the pictures of engines I had cut out from manufacturer brochures and pasted on the South wall of my room.
Yes, you'd think I'd learn, but no, I surely didn't. When I was fourteen or so, having finished my homework, I pulled the fridge out of its cove and used the vacuum to clean the condenser coils. It only took a few minutes, after which I had to go to the bathroom. Just as I was washing my hands, I heard the car door slam in the driveway and footsteps on the walk. And I hadn't yet put the vacuum away or pushed the fridge back in place. Oh shit. Time became a thick molasses, like when you see the dropped plate doing lazy end-over-end flips as it drifts slowly to the floor. There was absolutely no way I could get to the kitchen before…
…and there was the key in the front door. And the latch. And the hinges. And the step-step-step into the kitchen, and I knew I was a dead man. I no longer recall the content of that night's screaming, but it went on for two hours and I wound up with my bedroom privileges revoked; I was sent to the basement to sleep.
When I was 16 or 17, I took an interest in the activities of the Regional Air Quality Council's activities related to pollution created by motor vehicles. I was on the phone to the administrator discussing an upcoming meeting in which I wanted to participate. I'd learned by experience to take the precaution of making such calls from the basement phone, out of mother's earshot, but she picked up one of the upstairs extensions, heard a short bit of my conversation, hung up her extension, and flew down two flights of stairs. She grabbed the phone out of my hand and at the top of her lungs, dripping with scorn and sarcasm clearly audible to the administrator on the other end of the line, she let fly about how I had no business with any regional council and they didn't need Daniel Stern to tell them how to run the government. Thus immediately were my credibility and opportunity to participate flushed right down the crapper. Double jeopardy on that one, too; I would later catch flak from her for not having impressive activities and involvements to put on my college applications. Gee…!
Not long ago I happened to run into the other librarian from my elementary school. In our conversation I mentioned Ms. Burris. "She pronounced it 'Burriz'", she said.
There are more—lots more. There were whackings with wooden hangers for not keeping my room tidy, threats of military school for questioning arbitrary orders. And I haven't even got into the repeated forced disposal of beloved pets.
(Yes, I did have to speak to her on the phone today and I did fail to resist her bait about "our relationship". No, I don't know and I'll never know why my father didn't intervene. Followup to this post is here.)
One day in September 1981, I started kindergarten at Village Heights Elementary School on Colorado Boulevard in Englewood, Colorado. I was in Ms. Betty Lessig's class in Room 21, which had aqua low-loop carpeting and a yellow exterior door and shared a common wall with Room 22, that was Ms. Shirley Meyer's music classroom with pea green low-loop carpeting. The principal was Bob Morton, his secretary was Doris Johnson; the gym teacher was Rich Messerich, the lunch lady was Dorothy Wall, teachers' aides included Ms. Honn (or Hahn), Carla Hopp, and Arla Ayers; my school bus route was #2, and the bus—a 1975 IH Loadstar 1800 manual chassis with 66-passenger body by Blue Bird—was driven by Ed Simmock.
Why do I mention all these details and names? Well, because the librarian was Mrs. Burz. That was how her name sounded to me when she introduced herself to us on that first day of kindergarten during our walking tour of the school: "Mrs. Burz", or possibly "Burse". She didn't write it, so I didn't know how to spell it. But that didn't matter when I came home and told my mother about my day; I didn't have to spell it, all I had to do was pronounce it the way it had been spoken: "Missus Burz".
Except that was a terribly wrong answer. My mother's face did its dangerous thing and she towered over me and hollered "THAT'S WRONG! STOP SAYING 'BURZ'! HER NAME IS NOT MISSUZ BURZ! IT'S MISSUZ BURRIS! THERE IS NO 'BURZ', THAT'S NOT EVEN A REAL NAME, STUPID! [Your 3rd-grader sister] DEBBY ALREADY TOLD ME ABOUT HER, AND HER NAME IS MISSUZ BURRIS!"
I was terrorised, humiliated, and reduced to tears very similar to the ones early the next school year: one day I opened my lunch bag to find that my Fruit Roll-Up's laminated foil wrapper had been torn open and only half a Fruit Roll-Up lay within. The 1982 Tylenol scare was very fresh news, and I had been very carefully taught to pay close and skeptical attention to food wrappers, to watch out for tampering. Though that said, "carefully" isn't really quite le mot juste; mother explained that a bad person had put poison in Tylenol pills, then returned them to the store and other people had bought them, taken them, and died. That's why it was so important from now on to be careful and observant and skeptical. It all made sense to me except one part: We'd had a bottle of Tylenol in use since before, didn't that mean our bottle was OK? Her face did the dangerous thing. "WHY DON'T WE LET YOU BE THE ONE TO TRY THEM AND FIND OUT, STUPID?!" she screamed. "GOT A FEVER? WE'LL GIVE YOU SOME TYLENOL WITH CYANIDE!"
Oh.
Anyhow, back to the lunchroom in 1982: Half a Fruit Roll-Up instead of a whole one. Wrapper torn. Obviously this factory-sealed package had been altered, as had its content. It looked suspicious to me, and I couldn't explain it. So although I liked Fruit Roll-Ups (and this one had been strawberry, my favourite), I discarded it. Y'know that song about the bumble bee? "I'm <verbing> up my baby bumble bee—won't my mommy be so proud of me", et cetera? Well, that was me: I had remembered the warning, applied it in an applicable situation, and taken appropriate action. I rode the bus home—that year it was a 1976 Ford F700 automatic chassis with 66-passenger Blue Bird body, number 1117, driven by Bob Short—and told my mother what I'd done.
Oops. Wrong! Dangerous face thing. "WHAT?! WHY DID YOU THROW IT AWAY?!! IT WAS PERFECTLY FINE!!"
"Be…cause I thought it might…be contaminated?"
"YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT WORD MEANS, DO YOU?! DO YOU?!!! YOU TELL ME WHAT 'CONTAMINATED' MEANS!! YOU TELL ME RIGHT NOW!!"
I was reeling under the sudden attack, but obviously I'd done something stupid and wrong or I wouldn't be in such deep trouble. Even though I was only six, experience had already taught me the best thing was to go along and avoid digging myself any deeper: "I…I don't know."
YOU DON'T KNOW. THERE WAS ONLY ONE FRUIT ROLL LEFT! I CUT IT IN HALF AND GAVE HALF TO YOU AND HALF TO DEBBY, YOU DOLT!!", she screamed.
The only reply I could muster was "Wh…what's a 'dolt'?".
That was not the only time my ignorance of a word or name would blunt some of the impact of her attack. For some strange reason, I found comfort in food, and I ate too much. Too much "snack" (junk) food, and too much of the garbage they served at the school cafeteria. That and my ineptitude in sports meant by third grade I had developed a conspicuous paunch. Mother towered over me, hollering "LOOK AT YOU, FATTY! YOU LOOK LIKE ARCHIE BUNKER!"
Wh…who's Archie Bunker?
As I grew older, though, that shield stopped working; she knew I knew exactly what she meant when she called me a thorn in her side, a pebble in her shoe, a constant annoyance. And the hollering wasn't always the extent of it, either. I was about 11 or so, at home alone for the evening, when I fi nished my homework and decided to install a replacement upper heat element in the kitchen oven. She'd bought the element at the GE appliance parts center a few days before—at that time it would cost about sixteen dollars—but hadn't had time to do anything about it. I remember deliberately choosing between parking in front of the TV set for the night or doing the oven repair, and deciding that the oven repair would constitute participation in keeping the house in shape without being asked. I did the job correctly and neatly. Even put away all the tools. Mother came home and I showed her what I'd done (you'd think I'd have learnt by then, but no).
Wrong. Dangerous face. "YOU IDIOT! I HADN'T DECIDED WHETHER TO FIX THE OVEN OR GET A NEW ONE!!" She chased me up the stairs with a belt. I was duly terrorised; I ran in my room, slammed the door, called the police and told them she was going to hit me with a belt. They came, two of them in a Dodge Diplomat cruiser, talked to mother and then came upstairs and ordered me not to touch appliances in the house without permission. One of them commented on his way out about the pictures of engines I had cut out from manufacturer brochures and pasted on the South wall of my room.
Yes, you'd think I'd learn, but no, I surely didn't. When I was fourteen or so, having finished my homework, I pulled the fridge out of its cove and used the vacuum to clean the condenser coils. It only took a few minutes, after which I had to go to the bathroom. Just as I was washing my hands, I heard the car door slam in the driveway and footsteps on the walk. And I hadn't yet put the vacuum away or pushed the fridge back in place. Oh shit. Time became a thick molasses, like when you see the dropped plate doing lazy end-over-end flips as it drifts slowly to the floor. There was absolutely no way I could get to the kitchen before…
…and there was the key in the front door. And the latch. And the hinges. And the step-step-step into the kitchen, and I knew I was a dead man. I no longer recall the content of that night's screaming, but it went on for two hours and I wound up with my bedroom privileges revoked; I was sent to the basement to sleep.
When I was 16 or 17, I took an interest in the activities of the Regional Air Quality Council's activities related to pollution created by motor vehicles. I was on the phone to the administrator discussing an upcoming meeting in which I wanted to participate. I'd learned by experience to take the precaution of making such calls from the basement phone, out of mother's earshot, but she picked up one of the upstairs extensions, heard a short bit of my conversation, hung up her extension, and flew down two flights of stairs. She grabbed the phone out of my hand and at the top of her lungs, dripping with scorn and sarcasm clearly audible to the administrator on the other end of the line, she let fly about how I had no business with any regional council and they didn't need Daniel Stern to tell them how to run the government. Thus immediately were my credibility and opportunity to participate flushed right down the crapper. Double jeopardy on that one, too; I would later catch flak from her for not having impressive activities and involvements to put on my college applications. Gee…!
Not long ago I happened to run into the other librarian from my elementary school. In our conversation I mentioned Ms. Burris. "She pronounced it 'Burriz'", she said.
There are more—lots more. There were whackings with wooden hangers for not keeping my room tidy, threats of military school for questioning arbitrary orders. And I haven't even got into the repeated forced disposal of beloved pets.
(Yes, I did have to speak to her on the phone today and I did fail to resist her bait about "our relationship". No, I don't know and I'll never know why my father didn't intervene. Followup to this post is here.)