CHAPTER 189: WAXY NOSTALGIA #1

When I was but a wee, young lad, maybe three or four, innocent and yet to be forged into a cold, hard cudgel of hatefulness, I had a pet battery.   I called it 'Gizer, as in Energizer, even though when I envision 'Gizer in my mind, it clearly was a Duracell copper top.   I kept 'Gizer in my pocket and would always try to turn things on with it because batteries have THE POWER.   Eventually, 'Gizer started to leak and burned me, so my parents took him away.    'Gizer taught me an important life lesson:  friends are disposable and will burn you.

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When I was nine years old, my brother and I attended Camp Ravencliff, a YMCA camp along the Eel River in California.  While we were being assigned cabins based on age, I found myself seated next to this kind of husky kid with a bad bowl cut and one of those awful, prepubescent voices that modulates between Bobby Hill, Tiny Tim and Fat Albert who would not shut the fuck up about Michael Jackson, bologna, and Thundercats.   When they asked him his age right before me, and I found out that he was also nine, I realized that there was a good chance I would have to spend the entire week listening to his awful voice go on and on about stuff that was even insipid to other nine year olds.   So, when they asked me how old I was immediately after him, I lied and said that I was ten. 

Now, in hindsight, I realize that this sounds insane, but my lie worked.   In this day in age, computerized records and hyper-vigilant parenting would have prevented me from even having the option of bluffing, but in 1987, a boy three weeks from turning ten could lie about his age and wind up getting put in the cabin full for 12 and 13 year old juvenile delinquents.  

Wait what?  Yeah, there was one complication.  The ten year old cabin was already full.  And, again, let me acknowledge how insane this seems.   Instead of assuming that one of the ten year old was really a lying nine year old who didn't want to bunk in the same room with Fatty McChatsalot, the counselors just decided to put the slightly smaller, less mature kid in the special cabin for criminally inclined tweens.  Or maybe, they knew exactly what they were doing.

I learned a lot that week.    I was introduced to the terms "boner" and "Skate Betty", to Thrasher, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Pyromania, and learned how and where to throw a punch.   I learned how to ignite hairspray and the effect it had on cockroaches first hand, and what happens when you fill a sink with gasoline and light it on fire second hand.   I learned a lot about what Juvenile Hall was like.   I'm not going to say that it was a healthy experience, but it was probably the best possible coming of age moment that any nine year old liar could ever have.

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In the Fall of 1988, when I was ten and still living California, my friends Justin, Robbie and I formed a rap group.  We called ourselves the DC2s.  I'd like to pretend we named ourselves after the planes, but it was actually meaningless other than it sounded vaguely like Run DMC and R2D2 to us.   Our sole subject matter, as best as I can recall, was Paco, this fucking loudmouthed asshole in fifth grade who liked to pick on us fourth graders.  The only lyrics I remember exactly were "I hate Paco, but I don't care / because he don't wear no underwear."  I'm pretty sure we also implied that he made out with his own mother and pooped a lot.   We were pretty fucking street for a bunch of kids at a Lutheran grade school.

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You know what's really kind of awkward?  When you hear the kid with Tourette Syndrome who lives up the road yelling at the top of his lungs, and you assume that he's having one of his moments because you're used to him from school, and then he comes running by with his shoes on fire.