Dead As Dutch

by Rich Docherty

Stanley Evan Heberling wasn’t aware a category existed for someone like himself, who was born in between. It was only in his late teens that he ran across a reference to Middle Child Syndrome and, with further research, developed a greater understanding for why the way he was. Like how it was common for the second child of three to have low self-esteem because, as was his own case, he or she wasn’t given the attention of the first or last born. And how the kid who had the misfortune of being the middle sibling was often a loner, secretive, lacking confidence and the ability to share their inner thoughts with others. Growing up, Stan did feel lost in the middle, the result—he came to attribute—of being the overlooked and underappreciated offspring. For as far back as he could remember, his older brother Chuckie received preferential treatment from their parents, while his younger sister Dana was doted on as the baby of the family by their mother and father. Stan got the hand-me-downs.

  He discovered, however, that the prognosis wasn’t all bad, though. Half of all the US presidents were born smack-dab in the middle, not to mention celebs like Madonna and Jay Leno. Tweeners, it seemed, were reputed to be excellent negotiators (peacemaking was a specialty), inventive, and independent, the latter of which summed up Stan’s survival strategy. From early on, he did things his own way and as a result was tagged as “difficult” by teachers and counselors who suggested to his mother and father that their son was inflicted with a personality disorder. Radical mood swings were not uncommon for the middle born, but none of the educators or professionals who analyzed Stan’s emotional fluctuations—joyful one day, disconsolate the next—made the connection to his birth order. Instead, to help him cope with his “issues,” they recommended psychotherapy and a regimen of drugs, neither of which he was forced to submit to.

  Instead, as a kind of last resort, his mother and father atypically allowed Stan the freedom to follow his own whims and devices without much interference as long as he stayed out of trouble, which wasn’t all that hard considering his private nature. Holing up in the bedroom as much as Stan did reduced the chances of any truancy, despite day-to-day behavior some considered abnormal. Stan was that kid in the neighborhood considered by residents to be a little bit off, a reputation he began to earn as a nine-year-old by toting around a clunky, outdated VHS video camcorder his father Milton won once in an office raffle and never unpacked.

  From the first time Stan powered it on, the camera’s ability to capture whatever he pointed it at was a revelation: Not only could he hide behind the viewfinder—which appealed to his introverted side—but at the same time, he could see the world around him through the prism of the perspective he chose and even alter it with the particular sequence of images he selected to record. He didn’t realize it then, but he had found his niche, the one that had eluded him at home and school where being ignored was a given. The camera became his constant companion and the backyards of his Paramus, New Jersey, hometown like his personal make-believe Tinseltown back lot. He was inspired to mimic scenes from films he watched on movie nights, an irregular family gathering his parents initiated to foster greater unity in the Heberling household. Instead, it led to the eventual demise of the bonding sessions and the temporary removal of the camera from Stan’s possession, on several occasions, after some of his elaborate recreations went awry.

  Like the time he talked Chuckie into starring as Edward Scissorhands (in exchange for six months of manual labor washing and waxing his brother’s first car, a 1995 Chevy Cavalier). Dissatisfied with Chuckie’s inability to duplicate Johnny Depp’s masterful sculpting skills with shears as in the original film, Stan called for take after take without realizing the extent of the damage that was being done to the shrubbery that bordered their property. As it turned out, the ruined hedges belonged to the neighbor next door, a fact that was made clear to Stan once the devastation was spotted by the owner’s mother-in-law. She promptly fainted and landed on her beloved bed of award-winning gladiolas, crushing them beyond salvage. After profuse apologies, both in person and in handwritten letters from Stan, Milton—under threat of legal action—was forced to replace the destroyed flora at a considerable expense. Stan lost his camera privileges for almost a year and decided to never cast Chuckie again.

  Stan played it safer with most of his film makeovers, including Austin Powers (where he learned that a “shag” is not always a reference to a type of carpet that was popular in the 1970s), Men in Black (a cousin’s pug came in handy for the Frank role), and Forrest Gump, in which he filmed himself in the lead as the young Forrest, fashioning leg braces out of Styrofoam wrapped in aluminum foil. For over a decade it was the way Stan defined his identity, got noticed, and differentiated himself from a big brother who overshadowed him and a pampered little sister who always got her way. He was still the odd man out at home, Stan realized, but at least it didn’t bother him as much anymore.

  What turned out to be his final homespun production, the one he touted as his magnum opus, ended as both a supreme humiliation and resounding

  triumph. Stan was a huge fan of Tom Cruise and saw War of the Worlds in a mall multiplex the first day it was released. The Cruise character and his family lived in Bayonne, New Jersey, a town not all that far from Stan’s own, and this proximity was the catalyst for his own attempt at a War of the Worlds-style epic. He recruited his sister’s soccer team (secured with a guarantee to Dana that he would do all her math homework for her entire sixth grade school year) to serve as the victims of a hostile alien takeover of earth. After enduring a month of weather delays and scheduling snafus, Stan was perched on his roof with his camera and had just called “action” when the Paramus police rolled up along with a half-dozen other emergency vehicles. Ecstatic with their fortuitous arrival as if on cue, Stan continued to tape the frantic rescue operation until the duped cops ordered him down and took him into custody. It seems his depiction of bloodied children lying in the street writhing in agony was a bit too genuine for a nosey neighbor who believed the scene to be real (a point of pride for Stan) and dialed 911. Although he had to promise his parents never to resurrect War of the Worlds, the notoriety he received from the press coverage of his arrest (he spent several hours at the police station, but was never fingerprinted or photographed—Stan’s pleas for a souvenir mug shot were denied as was his request to shoot a scene from The Shawshank Redemption in one of the holding cells) and publicity from interviews on local TV news caught the attention of the Chairman of the Eisenhower College School of Visual Arts, Dr. Stuart Minnow. He was about to initiate a new Film Studies program and was so impressed by Stan’s passion and enterprise that he offered him a financial stipend if he agreed to enroll at the school that fall. In his haste to register his prodigal second son, Milton Heberling, with wife Gerry beside him and Stan in the rear seat, was pulled over on the thruway the very next morning by a New York State trooper and given a citation for excessive speeding.