 Many years ago I was a boy named Jamie. This story is about my life and the things that happened along the way. One day I would be a father and begin to enjoy the lives of my children unfold before me. The names in this story have been changed to protect the innocent – or the guilty.
The Journey to Dada
The days of becoming a father were never a thought in my little head. I was more interested in finding new ways to make my Hot Wheels cars fly farther off the ramp I constructed from pillows and flattened out boxes. Could I jump them across the room and land just short of the windowsill? Cracking a pane of glass would surely get me grounded and put a dent in my allowance. Taking this game out into the backyard would be a wise decision. My piggy bank was still recovering from the time a baseball veered off its course and landed on the hood of the neighbor’s classic 1957 white Ford Thunderbird convertible. A car cover protected the parade-driven automobile and the baseball didn’t do any damage - mostly thanks to the garage window that slowed it down upon entry.
My friend, Alex, and I went down to the True Value hardware store for a new pane of glass we purchased together with our own money. Twelve dollars later we were on our way home, skipping the usual stop at the TG&Y five and dime store to buy another balsa wood airplane, a bagful of Super Bubble gum, and other cavity inducing treats. It would probably be a month or so until we could afford to stop there again. The bicycle rides to the library would be excruciatingly painful because the store would be calling to us from the across the street like a schoolteacher with a bullhorn at recess.
No, impending fatherhood was not on my list of things to worry about. Heck, I didn’t even have a girlfriend. At eight years old, girls were gross. There was one girl, Susan, who lived a few houses away and always played with the boys – riding in our bicycle gang, The Bobcats, playing in forts, skipping rocks, and bowling horse-apples from the bois d’arc tree into the street gutters. But she probably got stuck playing with us because there were not any girls her age close by. We all spent the hot Texas summers together exploring the creek, playing basketball, climbing trees, and jumping on trampolines until the streetlights came on. I guess you could say Susan was a tomboy – catching tadpoles with the best of us – and that’s why we didn’t think she was gross. Like most girls, she eventually grew out of the tomboy phase and stopped hanging out with us. Nothing cramps a girl’s style like smelly creek water boys who may or may not have frogs in their pockets. One thing is for sure; we were playing with frogs and none of us more than wiped our hands on our shorts after being peed on by one.
Being a normal kid, I spent the years leading up to becoming a teenager making fun of girls – especially one in the fourth grade who sat at her desk and ate boogers. She once vomited all over her desk after lunch and nearly set off a hurling chain reaction from a dozen other kids sitting close enough to catch a whiff. The teacher politely instructed the class to stop yelling, “Ewwww!” and “Gross!” and hurried us all out into the hallway so there would not be any extra messes to clean up. It’s uncertain why all of us boys made fun of that girl. It’s possible that she threw up on purpose just to get back at us for being mean. If anything we should have been nice to her and learned her secrets.
Elementary school was a budding time for me. I developed my entrepreneurial skills by selling cinnamon flavored toothpicks in class for a nickel apiece or twenty-five for a dollar. Most kids couldn’t resist the spicy little sticks I soaked overnight at home. I spent most of my earnings in the Principal’s office. No, not on kickbacks – on the machine that was full of NFL football pencils. I collected them all and when I had multiples of a team, I would sell them to the other kids. Some kids were so desperate for their favorite team pencil they would pay double the quarter they were worth. I still have that pencil collection tucked away in the closet in an old cigar box, having resisted the temptation to sell my childhood memories on eBay.
There are some things about those days in elementary school that luckily did not prevent me from having girlfriends in the future – like the Michael Jackson magazine photos and sticker collection that another friend and I shared. We would plaster our notebooks and folders with images of the King of Pop and memorize the words to all of his songs. Once I had listened to Thriller over a million times and wore out the cassette tape, it was time to give up my collection idolizing the man who is now widely regarded as a pedophile. Fifth grade was over and it was time to move on to a new school. A junior high school where the eighth graders would most definitely beat the snot out of me if I wore that shiny white glove and parachute pants while doing the moonwalk down the hallway.
This was also about the same time that I officially became James. I first attempted the transition in the fourth grade, but the kids there already knew me as Jamie so it didn't stick very well. New beginnings and fresh faces at the junior high school would give me the opportunity to introduce myself as James. I thought Jamie sounded too much like a girl’s name – and I was starting to see girls in a whole new light. I was never a very big kid, so if I wanted to keep my head from being swirled in the toilet or avoid getting daily wedgies by the older bullies, I was going to have to ditch the name Jamie. No self-respecting, braces wearing, awkward twelve-year-old girl would go to the school dance with me after seeing me walk out of the boy’s room with my Fruit of the Looms wrapped around my ears.
And the journey to Dada continues…
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