Broke a Bone

In my early teen years, I hated this one kid...With a vengeance.

That's right HATE.
I remember his name but I'm not going to type it out, liable laws being what they are...Let's just say that his first name rhymes with Dumb and his last name rhymes with Ass.
I don't really remember now why I hated Dumbass so much back then.

I do remember that Dumbass was Uber-Annoying and liked to push my buttons, he had a way-too-big forehead, thought he was the best at everything and challenged me to beat him at virtually anything he happened to be doing at the moment.
And I do mean ANYTHING. I'm talking about Basketball, Football, Foosball, Air Hockey, Soccer, video games, running, walking, breathing, holding breath, eating, vomiting, starving, making paper airplanes, flying paper airplanes, building model cars, destroying model cars, handstands, pumpkin stands, kick stands, duck walks, high jumps, triple jumps and anything and everything else that could be done as a competition...In short he was Lex Luther to my Superman, Tom to my Jerry, Boss Hog to my Bo...or Luke.
That's the background, we didn't get along and we were always competing.

So, at this time I was around 13 or 14 years old...you know, still pretty dumb, practically cro-magnon really.

My family (2 parents, 2 teenagers, 2 grade schoolers, 2 pre-schoolers) had befriended this other family that was also huge, by all accounts, I mean they were HUGE! I'm pretty sure they outnumbered us by at least 3 kids and to my understanding the mother of this family continued shooting out kids until only a few years ago...Holy Uncontrolled Child-Bearing Batman!
And, you guessed it, Dumbass was one of the kids that made up this hoard. He was the second oldest, just like me, and ever since the day that our two families started hanging out Dumbass lived his life like a fire was under his ass...He was in constant motion and stuck on Code Level Annoying 24-7-365.

On this particular day Dumbass's Dad had built a skateboard ramp...The skateboard ramp of doom. It was sort of a launch ramp for future astronauts really, the angle on the ramp was incredibly steep and you had to have a great deal of momentum behind you as you hit the ramp to even get to the lip of the ramp and launch off of the other side...needless to say; our skinny asses were not getting much air.
In the heat of the afternoon Dumbass and his 17 brothers and sisters were taking a soda break when I got the idea of the day and began to plot out my course to fame and riches.

Imagine if you will for a moment...
A suburban side walk.
On one side a row of bushes that separate the front yard from the world.
On the other side a fairly unused surface street.
Before me a stretch of sidewalk that ends at the ramp about 20 feet away.
The ramp sits couched between a telephone pole and the sidewalk shrubbery.
12 feet up the telephone pole a crossbar the width of a baseball bat's handle crosses over the sidewalk.
The telephone pole crossbar hangs 12 feet above and slightly ahead of the skateboard ramp of doom.
Perfect.

This is how I imagined it going in my mind...
I would set the skateboard aside, kneel in a sprinters starting stance and bolt from that position of calm readiness into a frenzy of spinning arms and legs like Fred Flintstone on a Brontosaurus steak. My mind focused on the crossbar, my body tense and ready for the jump. As I near the skateboard ramp of doom I look briefly to my right at Dumbass and his hoard and say something smart, like "Watch this!" or "Heads up!" or "You suck!"...Then, turning my attention back to the ramp at the last possible second; I'd run up the ramp at terrific speed and jump at the last second straight up into the air. In slow motion now, arms reaching, teeth gritting, soaring like an eagle...I'd grab onto the telephone poles crossbar and swing in the air with the greatest of ease with a laugh on my lips and a twinkle in my eye as Dumbass sits dejected and alone as I deal out the final trump card that he can not match or dispute. The neighborhood girls would be impressed by my athleticism, naturally, so they would come from several blocks around and cheer for me and chant my name.
Eventually I would get down from the pole and walk up and down the block signing autographs while surrounded by admirers and lovers until the sun went down on the glorious day that I had created.

This is how it actually went...
I set my skateboard aside and knelt in a sprinters starting stance. I bolted from that position of calm readiness into a clumsy ambling gait worthy of a newborn deer. My mind a jumbled mess of confusion, my body turning to jelly and telling me to stop. As I near the skateboard ramp of doom I look briefly to my right at Dumbass and his hoard and say something dumb, like "Hey!"...Then, turning my attention back to the ramp at the last possible second; I'd run up the ramp at a fast walk and jump at the last second straight up into the air. In slow motion now, arms reaching, teeth gritting, trembling like a leaf...I reach out for the crossbar and only manage to brush my two longest fingers against the cold hard steel before the momentum of my body plus the brush of my fingers against the pole set my body in motion. I begin to twirl in mid air completing a double backwards flip before landing on the sidewalk. When my body slams down on the concrete sidewalk my arm has hit the ground a millisecond before my face. My chin slams squarely into the middle of my right arm breaking both of the bones in my arm into two pieces and twisting my arm into something resembling Gumby in the hands of a sadist.
I raised my head and looked around, a little dazed, a little confused. I saw my arm all twisted and broken and it definitely did not click in my brain that I had done some damage until I turned to Dumbass and his family to point out that my arm looked funny. When I saw his face and the other kids screaming and running away I got a new perspective on the condition I was in. I immediately became aware of the numb sensation coming from my arm and after I looked at it again I knew that I wasn't feeling weird because my idea hadn't worked, I was feeling weird because I'd broken my body!
So, an air splint administered by a hot looking blonde EMT and an ambulance ride to an emergency room brought me to the point in the story where the doctor injected some kind of three wisemen of shots into my veins and I started feeling sleepy right away, but I did not fall asleep before witnessing the doctor taking a firm grasp on my hand with one of his hands and my shoulder with his other and proceed to pull the broken bones in my arm apart and then reset them...after that it was 3 days of drugged-up bliss eating popsicles and ice cream in between naps and TV watching.

If I had it all to do over again I think I would've put a little bit more steam in my engine before jumping off that ramp.
It would have been glorious!

Anywho, that's the first time I ever broke a bone.

Learned to Cuss

At a certain point in my mid-teen years I came to the clear and sudden realization that my older brother was going to marry a girl that I had had a crush on for a pretty good amount of time...Now, don't get too emotional over this statement of seeming teenage romantic nostalgia, you don't know the facts yet...the truth is, she hated me at the time and will admit to that fact today.

This story starts with my Sister-in-law because without her delicate instruction I would be perhaps the least foul-mouthed Irishman alive today, let alone that I would have the worst tone, inflection, affect and emphasis of maybe anybody that had ever cursed or ever would...

In short, at 12 midnight in the Taco Bell parking lot at 771 Stony Point Rd in Santa Rosa, California; the existential summer blonde, my future sister-in-law and ex-crush broke it down and showed a good Christian boy the sheer joy of a properly executed F-word and all of the magical ways that that word could be promulgated.

I remember practicing the spacing, rhythm and tempo of the phrase that she had given me to learn by...frightening yet brilliant in its simplicity: "Fuck you, You fuckin'-fuck!"...Over and over again I would recite the cursing mantra until I felt that I had sufficiently matched her cadence and inflection...I feel a small amount of pride when I tell you today that I'm probably the best and most well-versed F-word enthusiast that I know of...aside of course from my sister-in-law...

She, the wizened instructor. I, the eager grasshopper.
The tools; one word, endless combinations and a smirking sarcasm born of pride in craftsmanship and unbridled enthusiasm.

The next week she taught me the proper letter emphasis of the word Shit...
It went something like this "Shea-It."

I'm still working on Shit, be patient master, be patient.

Kissed a girl

I was 8 years old, maybe 9, I'm pretty sure that I had buck teeth and a page boy haircut. God help me.

To complete the image of me at 8 or 9 years old in your mind; imagine that I am wearing hand-me-down velcro tennis shoes, knee-high soccer socks, a sky blue t-shirt with "Benjy!" proudly printed across the front and shorts that would make Magnum P.I. blush.
Got that? Ok...Here we go...

Her name was Amanda, I think. She was cute, I remember that.
She was about as cute as a redheaded, green-eyed, pale-yet-befreckled girl could be, but I didn't know that she was cute back then...I thought she was gross, had a staring problem and was really, really grabby.

At the time I thought she was my cousin, which put me off bigtime because I thought that she was coming on pretty strong for being family...I mean, as young as I was, I knew that making out with family was generally a bad idea...also, at the time I was under the impression that making out led directly to Pregnancy and therefore Madness and Poverty.
Gimme a break, I'd only been tying my own shoes for a few years, I was figuring it all out.

Anywho...

We (my family and hers) were at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, California, if you'd ever been there you would know that unless you're very interested in Farm Animals, Indian Quilts and Hay, lots and lots of Hay; you would not be very interested in the Sonoma County Fair.
However there were and I believe still are some of the greatest and scariest fair rides in existence...I say greatest because every ride is great when you're a kid, and I say scary because I now know that at any given time the ride that you are on can suddenly burst into flames or come loose and fly across the sky before landing in a pile in the middle of the fairway.

That's right Folks! The really old and rickety looking Ferris wheel really is rickety and old...I think that the Carnies must lay bets at the beginning of every fair season as to when the the "Ol' Girl" will fall apart. I would if I was a Carnie!
Of course, at the time I didn't know any of this, all I knew was that this red-headed girl named Amanda was trying to hold my hand and kept asking me to ride on the same booth as her when we went on the Ferris wheel.

I was terrified. Terrified!
Not of the Ferris wheel mind you...that was a piece of cake, in my 9 year old world I faced death square in the eyes everyday and laughed as I sped away on my BMX with a baseball card flicking in the spoked wheels, making my cruiser sound much more menacing than it actually was.
But this was a different story altogether, I was feeling true and genuine fear...this crazy red-headed girl was trying to hold my hand! AND she wanted to ride in the same booth as me on the Ferris wheel! AAAGGHHH!! I was no dummy, I knew what happened when girls got boys alone on Ferris wheels...Pregnancy, Madness and Poverty...I didn't want anything to do with it; yet I was powerless against the iron will of the little girl that crushed my hand in a vice-like grip as she led me toward my destiny. I knew then what the Bible meant when it said that "...He was lead like a lamb to the slaughter." I was doomed.

So, it was there on that incredibly old and incredibly rickety Ferris wheel that the girl that I thought was my cousin leaned over and stole a kiss from me...she must have known that if I had not been 80 feet in the air on a spinning death trap that I would have bolted after puking on her shoes. As it was, I had no where else to go and could do no more to resist her pursed lips than close my eyes, scrunch up my face in the hopes of becoming less attractive and pray to Jesus that it would be over soon.

To my relief and further belief in prayer; Amanda did no more than give me a light kiss on the lips before turning away from me and giggling like a crazed person...she giggled like that for the rest of the ride and only looked back at me once or twice - I'm assuming to confirm that she had actually done what she thought she had done.

When we stepped off of the Ferris wheel I felt fairly certain that both my parents and hers knew that Amanda and I had been "Making out", I'm just guessing, but I think they may have known because Amanda and I were holding hands, grinning like idiots with bright red cheeks and glazed-over eyes.

I never saw Amanda again after that night at the fair and even though my memories of her are a little fuzzy and I lose a little bit of the memory as time passes; I'll still think of that red-headed, freckle-faced girl with grim determination in her green eyes whenever I think of the first time I ever kissed a girl...rather, got kissed by a girl.