There are so many interesting things to learn at school besides the alphabet, but the experience of the bigger kids chasing me was a frightening experience. I thought about this event. Well, running to the Boys Club certainly turned out to be a good idea, I thought. One of the other things, difficult for me to figure out was how to treat the girls that were in my class. Yes, I did have a sister and a Mom and I knew that they were different from boys because they did not have anything between their legs and Mom had those big things on her chest called breasts. However, the females in my class seem so different about so many things. One day in my kindergarten class, Sister reassigned us to different seats and I had to sit behind this little girl named Patty.
Whenever she had a chance, she would turn around and talk with me. She had nice brown hair, blue eyes, a nice friendly smile, and was very funny. I thought she was very special and she became my friend. I told my Mom about Patty. One day my Mom was attending a school event and Patty was there with her Mom. They all met and my Mom told her Mom that I had told her about Patty. Therefore, she told Mom that she could bring me over to Patty's house sometimes, so we could play. This was a great idea, I thought. I liked Patty, even if she was a girl.
One day we visited Patty's house, and Patty and I went out in the backyard to play while our Moms talked in the house. Patty loves to play just about any game. In addition, the thing that I like most about her is that she can climb trees! I never thought any girl could climb trees! One day I asked Patty if she liked movies and she said she did. I talked to my Mom and the next day at school, Patty and I arranged to go and see a movie together, if it was OK with our parents. When I asked my Mom about seeing a movie on the weekend with Patty, she said,
“You are the man and she is the woman so it is your responsibility to pay Patty’s way into the movie,” Mom said.
“Ok, Mom, I will. Will you give me the money?”
“Of course”, Mom said with a very unusual grin on her face and I thought there was also a bit of color on her face that I did not see very often.
“Who knows, Patty is a very nice girl and she might be really important to you some day,” Mom said.
“What do you mean, Mom?” I asked.
“Oh, you will find out some day”, she said.
I did not understand that answer at all. Funny, she gave me just about that same answer when I asked her why she used to spend so much time with Daddy in the bathroom when he was taking a bath. Taking a bath was so different from going to a movie, so why do I get the same answer? In addition, Mom had never referred to me as a “man” before. Going to a movie with a friend like Patty seemed to be a normal thing to do but, for some reason, Mom seemed to think this movie event was very special.
Mom gave me 28 cents for admission because the fee for both Patty and I was 14 cents apiece. She also gave me some other change for some popcorn or candy. My favorite candy is Good and Plenty licorice candy. Therefore, when Saturday afternoon finally came around, Mr. and Mrs. Jones accompanied Patty and me to the movie at the Lyric Theatre on Washington Boulevard. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were very surprised when I insisted on paying for Patty's admission into the movies. Patty looked at me in a very strange way when I did this. She is my very first friend, but there are some other unusual feelings that go on inside me when I am near Patty.
Weeks later
This is just another morning and I am getting ready for school. Mommy did not have time to make Lauren and I breakfast, this morning. Therefore, I have to go get my breakfast downstairs with Grandma. I walk down the stairs one-step at a time holding on to the railing as Mom taught me to do. At the bottom of the first flight, I turn to my left and go down the short flight of eight steps to the back porch of my grandmothers’ house. The windows, now on my left, look out on the backyard with grass and a big apple tree. The entry door to the first floor residence is on my right. I notice the big black iron frog on the floor. It is the doorstop when the back door is open during summer months. The frog was very scary when I was younger. When I was smaller and could only crawl, he looked like a very large and ferocious creature. Now, it is just a big black piece of iron to me that looks like a friendly frog and makes a good doorstop.
I walk into the kitchen, and see my Grandma already has breakfast on the table. I can hear my sister Lauren coming down the stairs behind me. She is a little slower than I am in this process. Since I am a little bigger now I can sit in a regular chair, even though it is a little low for me sometimes. My sister Lauren now gets to sit in my old white chair with the nice tray. This morning, we have bacon and eggs, Grandpa's favorite breakfast, but he is already gone to work. I eat the bacon first because it is my favorite and tastes yummy and is crunchy. Next, I dunk my slice of toast into the egg yolk, then finish the egg white with my fork, eat the slice of toast and it is time to go to school. Grandma gives me a kiss, wipes some egg off my face and hands me the book that I almost forgot. I leave by the front door, which has an old-fashioned egg shaped doorknob inside, and another egg shaped doorknob on the outside so it is easy for me to open. Now on the front porch with a grey wood deck, I walk down the five stairs to the front walkway. Some other kids of all ages are now passing by on their way to school. I am still alone during my walk to school because Lauren cannot go to school yet; she is not big enough.
School every day is okay but it is a lot of work. The weather in September is starting to get a little colder with all the reddish brown leaves on the trees. Even October is sometimes pleasant, but when we get to November, it is even colder. Walking today is okay. Up ahead I see some bigger kids ahead of me. One of them turns around, looks at me and says something to the other kids. They all laugh and keep walking. Behind me, I hear some other kids coming. It is two brothers. They are bigger than I am and they can walk a lot faster. They pass me by and keep walking ahead of me. Minutes later, as I am getting near to the front entrance of Saint Ambrose elementary school, I see Sister Donna standing just inside the entryway near the door that opens into the hallway. She helps me with my coat and scarf and hangs it up in the cloakroom for me. Then she points to the classroom, and I walk past her into the kindergarten classroom.
Class is interesting, because they teach us all sorts of things, and we pray a lot. Sister Donna is nice, and most of our schoolwork is listening to different stories Sister Donna reads to us. It is also about learning the alphabet, taking naps, eating lunch and learning about our wonderful Catholic religion. I am getting to know my classmates, which are all very different from each other. Some are quiet, and some make a lot of noise. Some smell very different. Some are happy and some are sad all the time. Some of the kids also wet their pants. All this keeps Sister Donna very busy, but she looks like she loves every minute of it. She is usually smiling or has that very caring look on her face. She is wonderful.
Sitting in this desk with a grooved place to put a pencil is a very new experience for me. As I sit in my row with about fifty little kids around me, I feel almost overwhelmed by the activity. Everything feels blurry in my head and I am trying to figure out what to do. Sister Donna says, in the front of the room, “Listen up children, we are going to go over the alphabet” “Patrick, pay attention and look up here”. She then starts pointing to the letters on large pieces of paper hung around the room at the top of the blackboard running from the front of the room, over the door, and down the wall toward the rear of the room.
“And what comes after, this letter, Freddy?” “Elizabeth, what comes after G?” Sister says. This process is boring, and I do not know why we are doing it. Sister just told us that it has something to do with reading. I think I will like to read books, because Lauren and I enjoy it when Mom reads them to us. If learning the alphabet can help me read on my own, I guess I want to learn it.
My first year at school is a very calm experience but it seems like it will last forever. However, every day at 2:30 PM, the bell rings and first, we go into the coatroom, a long rectangular room behind the black boards, get our jack
ets on with Sister Donnas’ help, and I get ready for my long walk home. After we get our coats on, we leave the classroom in a single file line. Turning left into the hallway and then right toward the exit, we walk out the door to the wide concrete sidewalk area in front of the school. Many of the kids stop there and get in their groups, if their parents are going to pick them up. A parent or someone else picks up most of the kids in my class.
Since no one picks me up every day, walking out of the school, I quickly walk to the curb at the crosswalk, look left and right, then cross the street to walk up the next block. Across the street on my left is the public school, which has a big fence surrounding the schoolyard. I do not like walking on that side of the street, because many of the kids in the fenced yard yell at me. I just keep walking up Broadway toward home. I have about an hour before the bigger kids get out of school and then walking home gets more complicated. The bigger kids will now shove me or hit me on the back as they pass me. If I plan it, I can always go to the Boys Club, which is half way between the school and home. The rule is that I have to tell my Grandmother first that I am going to stop there after school. Grandma is always looking for me to arrive at home before 3:00PM and gets very worried if I am late.
My walk home is only four and a half blocks, consisting of one block with homes on both sides of the street, the block of homes on the right across the street from the public school, the long block where the Boys Club is, then another short block across from the Triangle. The triangle is a triangular shaped, bare piece of land at the angled intersection of Broad and Main Street. After passing the triangle I cross one more street and I am on the block were my home is. My home, the fourth house on the left, has a big wide front porch. In the summer months, my whole family sits outside on the big front porch, because it is cooler there than inside the house.
I walk up the walkway to the house, go up the front stairs to the porch and open the front door. I say, “Grandma, I am home.” She is usually in the kitchen, getting dinner ready for Grandpa at that time of the day and was always glad to see me. Most of the time, she is alone. Sometimes her daughter Elaine might be visiting and whenever that is the case I have to be very careful because Elaine was always looking for a reason to discipline me. For some reason, whenever Elaine or Ernie were there, Grandma was usually very quiet. Our family seemed to have a custom that any adult could discipline any of the kids. Elaine got mad at anything, including a simple look on my face that she did not understand. She would then launch into her dramatic act and I knew that act very well already.
If she said anything to me, I got scared and did not know what to say. If I hesitated in answering her, she would say,
“Hey, I am talking to you, pay attention to me!”
If I did not give her the answer that she wanted or would not answer, she said,
“Answer me, right now!”
Any hesitation to answer her question again would cause the next response,
“If you do not answer me I will fix you good!”, or
“Wipe that grin off your face!”
If I did not or could not get a very serious look on my face, immediately, she would get up from her chair, march to wherever I was, put her face about three inches from mine and scream loudly,
“You better wipe that grin off your face or I will do it for you!”
Sometimes when she did this I would start to cry and she would scream,
“Stop crying or I will really give you something to cry about!”
This comment meant she was going to spank me and sometimes, she did.
Surprised by this treatment, I never could understand Grandma’s silence through it all. I could not understand, based on the strict but mostly kind treatment I received from my immediate family of Mom, Grandma, Grandpa, and Mary, why Elaine, Ernie and some other family members could get away with treating me in a very abusive and mean way. I tried to avoid these people whenever possible. I was glad that they were not around me every day as I faced my new challenge of starting school.
Kindergarten is a lot of work, full of new experiences and information, and I gradually got used to it. Life is hard, getting up very early is difficult and when the winter months come, I shiver in the cold during the mornings near our family room stove while Mom gets me dressed for school. I hate walking to school through the rain, cold and snow, but there is no choice.
The year seems to be going by fast and my walk to and from school is sometimes scary when the bigger kids are around. They fight a lot but I am lucky because most of the time they do not bother me. The worst part of it is that, when many of the big kids pass me, they hit or push me. That might be the reason that I do not see too many kids, my size and age, walking to school like this. Mom and Grandma do not think there is anything to it; as they say, it is only four blocks. Occasionally I go to the Boys Club after school and play flat pool in the basement game room of the club. Nevertheless, what I like most about the Boys Club is that there are strict rules about behavior. No pushing, hitting, or fighting or you are suspended. I like that a lot, because I feel safe there. In addition, when I get older I will be able to play basketball or baseball during the spring and summer months.
What a surprise it is when summer finally comes and school is over and I can sleep as long as I want to every morning. When I finally get up, the only thing I have to do is go downstairs and have breakfast. My sister Lauren is getting bigger, and so we would all have breakfast together sometimes. After that, we can go out in the backyard and play. We have a swing on the big apple tree in the backyard that Grandpa put up for us. I push Lauren, because she is too small to swing by herself. Then I try picking some of the small apples off the apple tree, but they are not ready to eat yet and won’t be until September when school starts again. There is also a small fence in our backyard that separates our yard from the neighbor behind us. I quickly learn how to climb over that fence so I can take some rhubarb from the neighbors’ back yard garden. I liked to eat it raw.
We have many family get-togethers during the summer and my sister and I like to hang out with our cousins, Donna and Danny. Danny is still very young, because he is two years younger than I. Donna was about my age, born within a few months of me. It was Lauren and my favorite treat to have Danny and Donna come to visit us. Donna is cute and funny but bossy, though like her parents Ernie and Elaine. When all the adults are together downstairs, the four of us go upstairs to play.
The functions of our family seem to be complicated. First, of course was Mom, who is my only Parent. She is very determined to make a good life for our small family, just the three of us. As a very aggressive and independent minded female, she is a unique personality and is going through some difficult times.
Elaine, the next oldest sister, was also very aggressive, but in a different way. She liked to laugh a lot, but had a mean streak, when it came to kids. Since any adult in the family could criticize, boss or impose discipline on any of the kids, whenever Elaine and Ernie were around they would always be the first to punish me for something.
Elaine had also graduated from Union Endicott High School a year after my Mother. After that, she started dating this handsome tall man named Ernie, who had recently returned from his enlistment in the army. Ernie was an athletic he-man person that lived about seven miles away from our house before he and Elaine married. Before their marriage, he would sometimes run from his home to our home to meet Elaine, arriving all sweaty and proud of his accomplishment. He also worked at IBM, like many of the other men in our family. Ernie is a real macho man who always walked with a swagger and spoke loudly. Everything he does is loud. Elaine and he seemed to be a perfect match, because everything she did was loud as well, including talking and laughing. She would often say to Grandma, loudly, “You have to show them that you are the boss!” Then she would laugh and always seemed to enjoy her frequent dominating encounters with any of the children.
When the four cousins are together, we will play games, such as “hide and see
k”. After a few minutes of playing, we might forget about our mutual fear of making too much noise that would give Elaine or Ernie a reason to scream at us. I like to get together to play our games and so do Lauren, Donna and Danny. They are our favorite people and playmates.
After enjoying playing our games for a few minutes, I heard that loud noise of someone climbing the stairs and knew it could only be Uncle Ernie. When getting to the top of the stairs, he began yelling, “What are you doing up here? You are making a lot of noise and I want you to stop it, NOW! If you do not stop, I will spank you. Do you hear me?” The four of us cower in fear as he raises his hand in a threatening manner and we become very quiet. If we did not quiet down right away, we knew he would immediately hit any or all of us with his big hands. We all knew, when Ernie hit us, he hit us hard, and it really hurt.
After we became very quiet, Ernie tromps back down the stairs and goes back to the downstairs kitchen. As he speaks with Elaine and Grandma, he is laughing at the same time, bragging about how much he frightened us. Elaine always laughed loudly at these tales along with her husband. I could never understand why both Elaine and Ernie always thought it was so much fun to terrorize four children innocently enjoying their time together.
In addition to the yelling and intimidation received from Elaine and Ernie, spankings are a normal daily occurrence. Mom spanks us all the time for anything we do that she does not like. Grandma would also spank us whenever we misbehaved. Grandpa, however, never touched us. The big difference between the immediate family and my aunt and uncle is that even when they verbally and physically discipline us they never seem to enjoy it. I never have fear when around my Grandmother, Grandfather and Mother but I always experience fear when Elaine and Ernie are around. They seem to enjoy making children afraid of them. Why do they enjoy it? When walking to school and a bigger person runs by and suddenly slaps me on the back, I also feel the same feeling of fear, so it makes sense to me that the street bully and my aunt and uncle get similar pleasure from this activity.
Bullied Page 10