Scenes from an Awkward Childhood #6: Artistic Expression

By Shawn

A finger painting by the author as a three-year-old, which, despite significant parental protestation, he insisted on entitling "The Inside of a Dog."

 

Scenes from an Awkward Childhood #5: Love and Other Drugs

By Shawn

When I was in first grade, I had a massive crush on a girl in my class named Karen.* This was a love-at-first sight type of deal—my feelings were intense, immediate, and based on absolutely no interaction at all. I was at a complete loss as to what I should do about this. My only previous faux-relationship experience had been the two girls I was “married” to in kindergarten; but I seem to recall being for the most part a passive participant in that strange polyamorous relationship. It quickly became clear to me that I wasn’t ever going to work up the courage to actually talk to her or anything like that, so the policy I settled on was a healthy combination of scrupulous avoidance and longing glances from afar. I didn’t expect this was going to get me anywhere, but it was the best six year-old me could muster.

To my surprise, though, that shit totally worked. My longing gazes were returned, which demonstrates the palpable truth of the Twilight principle that if you stare at things long enough, they will love you. This went on for a few weeks, and then, one day, out of the blue, she came up to me and invited me to her birthday party. This was a gesture fraught with meaning. She didn’t invite everyone in the class, so it wasn’t just to be polite. I decided the only possible motive she could have was that she too could sense our transcendental connection and knew we were meant to be together.

Were we? We’ll never know. Because here’s what happened next.

I should preface this next bit by noting that, as a kid, I was very manic. Very manic. Whenever my family went out to eat, for example, it was not uncommon for me to disappear under the table and then pop up at someone else’s like a little hyperactive gopher. For this reason, my parents were careful to ensure that I never, ever ingested caffeine.

My parents, however, were not at this party. What was at this party was a bunch of kids I didn’t know, the girl I loved but was too scared to talk to, and an everlovin’ shit-ton of soda. So there I am, standing awkwardly by myself next to the food, when one of the adults offers me some Pepsi. I try it, and find it takes the edge off. I start to feel a little better. “More Pepsi please!” My request is granted. This process is repeated. Again. And again. And again. And that’s when  shit. got. real.

I don’t remember a lot about the party from this point forward. I don’t think my long-term memory was really operating at the time. The whole thing was sort of like being the guy from Memento, if that guy were on a wheelbarrow’s worth of cocaine.

The little I do remember, however, is plenty suggestive. At one point, I was running around the yard screaming, singing songs of my own invention into a frozen hot dog I was using as microphone. Also, you know those cars, the kid-sized ones that actually have a motor and you can drive around in? Karen had two. And I remember methodically taking them apart. Where’d I find a wrench? Who knows. But I had one. And those cars needed to be disassembled.

This goes on for a while. I have destroyed everything I can get my hands on and thoroughly, thoroughly ruined this party. A fed-up Karen finally comes up to talk to me.

Karen: Hi, Shawn.

Shawn: KAREN, YOU’RE UPSIDE DOWN!

Karen: You’re doing a headstand.

Shawn: WHAT? WHY ARE YOU TALKING SO QUIET?

Karen: I’m not quiet, you’re screaming.

Shawn: I’M NOT SCREAMING, THERE ARE THREE OF YOU! WHAT’S HAPPENING?!?

Karen: I have to go.

The party was pretty much over at this point, and my mother arrived to pick me up.

Shawn: HELLO MOM!

Mom: Honey, why are you running around me in circles?

Shawn: I’M MAKING A TORNADO!

Mom: Sweetie, that’s not how that works.

Shawn: IT IS IF I KEEP RUNNING!

Mom: What’s gotten into you? Wait a second. Shawn, did you have soda?

Shawn: YES!

Mom: How much?

Shawn: TWO BOTTLES!

Mom: Oh no—do you mean big bottles or small bottles?

Shawn: BIG BOTTLES!

Mom: You drank two liters of soda.

Shawn: DUNNO! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH–

Mom: Siiigh.

I didn’t get to sleep that night until 3:00 AM. My mother had to stay up with me and sing me songs until I stopped twitching. And as for Karen, those longing glances were no longer returned. I don’t really blame her. But at least I learned my lesson. Love and drugs are an explosive combination. Also, I think I hid most of her toy car parts in a tree. I hope she found them.

* This was her actual name. Karen, seriously, I am so sorry. I swear, it wasn’t me, baby, it was the Pepsi.

Scenes from an Awkward Childhood #4: Satan

By Shawn

When I was young, I had a deep and abiding fascination with evil. I’m not sure exactly what the draw was; I was for the most part a nice kid. But boy did I love evil, and boy did I pick bad times to talk about it. Like, at a super-crowded Roy Rogers. That was so crowded we had to share a table. With two nuns.

Here’s how that went.

Shawn: Mom?

Mom: What, Shawn?

Shawn: Mom, do you believe in the Devil?

Mom: (wary glance at nuns) Um…

Shawn: Because I do.

Mom: Uh huh…

Shawn: If you sell your soul, he’ll make a deal with you.

Mom: (notices nuns are growing concerned) No, dear–

Shawn: I’m going to do it.

Mom: No you’re not.

Shawn: I’m going to sell my soul so I don’t have to go to school.

Mom: You’re not selling your soul.

Shawn: And then I’m going to take over the world.

Mom: (trying desperately to limit damage) Honey, you don’t really want to take over the world…

Shawn: Yes I do. Like the bad guy in the Care Bears movie.

Mom: I think maybe it was a mistake to let you watch that movie. I think maybe you learned the wrong lessons.

Shawn: The school library has a book on black magic. I’ve checked it out twelve times.

Mom: I didn’t know about that.

Shawn: Do you know what a pentagram is?

Mom: Let’s talk at home.

Shawn: You draw it in chalk, then you stand in the middle and pray to Satan.

Nuns: (clearly quite alarmed)

Mom: Don’t do that, sweetie.

Shawn: He’ll give you what you want…

Mom: No–

Shawn: But you gotta have blood.

Mom: Oh please just eat your chicken.

No such luck, darling mother. No such luck. At least the nuns just got up and left before I finished explaining how I was gonna get the blood, because the plan was rather… involved. (On that note, Joey, I’m so sorry—why did you stay friends with me?)

Scenes from an Awkward Childhood #3: The Butterfly Effect

By Shawn

You’ve probably heard of the butterfly effect—the butterfly effect refers the fact that a small event can have large and far-reaching consequences, ones that are often quite difficult to anticipate. I wish to illustrate the truth of this proposition with a painful example from my youth.

In first grade, my best friend was Alex Schwartz.* We sat next to each other, ate lunch together, played together at recess—I even helped him through a very tumultuous relationship with Paula Spelling, who never knew what she wanted, mostly because she was six. After several months of this, our friendship had grown quite deep. Naturally, I assumed that we’d be continue to be friends for many years to come. But what I hadn’t counted on was that one day, during story time, I was going to sneeze right on Alex’s face.

I’ll never know what caused me to sneeze that day—a floating particle of dust, an allergen, perhaps an unwelcome gust from some distant butterfly’s wing. Regardless, the need to sneeze, combined with poor reflexes and an inability to think quickly, had disastrous implications for Alex’s face, which bore the brunt of the assault.

I sneeze-massacre Alex’s face. Alex is not happy. Fair enough, I wouldn’t be either. But Alex is so pissed at me, he decides he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore. Now, kids say that to each other all the time, but Alex meant it. He wouldn’t have anything to do with me from that point on. Don’t you think you were overreacting a bit there, Alex? I mean, sure, what happened was gross. No one was glad that went down the way it did. But it was clearly an accident; I clearly tried to turn away. It’s not like I yelled, “Hey bitch!” and then blasted you full force. I explained all this to him, on the verge of tears. I begged him hysterically to take me back. Bitch. Did. Not. Care.

This broke my tiny heart. In a letter, Rousseau says, “I do not need particular friends, but when I have them, I greatly need not to lose them, for if they break away, they tear me apart.” That quotation fits pre-adolescent me quite well. I’d never lost a friend before, and the experience was gut-wrenching.

Captain Dickbarn and I went our separate ways and didn’t speak to one another again. I still didn’t understand how one sneeze could have such a dramatic effect. Little did I know, I had not yet experienced its full consequences.

Ten years later, I was in high school. I had to take band my freshman year, at my parents’ well-intentioned but entirely misguided insistence. My school was large, so there were several bands. One day, we were at a band festival (I had to go to band festivals; thanks, Mom and Dad), watching one of the other bands from our school play. Well who should I see on stage, playing his instrument like an asshole, other than Alex “Throw Me in a Fire” Schwartz?

Had I forgiven Alex at all in the intervening years for devastating my social life and stomping my heart to bits? Not remotely. So I turn to the girl I’m sitting with and say the following.

Shawn: You see that guy with the bassoon all the way on the right? That’s Alex Schwartz. He’s a terrible human being. Everybody hates him.

Girl: Why’s everybody hate him?

I had no idea. Because the “everybody” in question was, for the most part, me. Also, I hadn’t had any meaningful interaction with him for a decade. Not that any of that was going to stop me.

Shawn: Because just look at him. Terrible. The way he holds that bassoon. Like he loves it. I bet he wakes up every morning, and the first thing he thinks is, “I’m Alex Schwartz, and I get to rub my stubby troll-fingers all over my bassoon today!” If you love your bassoon so much, Alex, why don’t you kill yourself with it?

Girl: Man, you really hate that kid.

Shawn: Not just me, everybody. God, look at that stupid turtleneck! “I’m Alex Schwartz, and I looooove this turtleneck. My favorite thing in the whole world is to look like a soulless, dead-eyed tortoise, so every morning, I waddle to my dresser and—”

At this point, the man in front of me begins to turn around. I start to work up a rejoinder to the “Would you please keep it down?” that I’m sure I’ve got coming.

Instead, this happens.

Man: That’s my son.

Now this is awkward. The situation I found myself in sucked for a variety of reasons. First of all, I’m now face-to-face with the father of this kid I’ve been trashing for minutes just because he hurt my feelings when I was six. Second, I had extremely fond memories of Alex’s dad, who used to come in to our class on occasion and read to us. So, instead of that clever rejoinder I was working on, all I could think was, “The last time I saw you, you were reading us a story about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I loved you… and now boy are you scowling at me.” This was the time for a graceful apology. But I was a little overwhelmed. What came out was more like this.

Shawn: Fuh-derp?

His father holds my gaze for another minute, just in case I have something to say for myself other than “fuh-derp.” I don’t. He turns away in disgust. I sink about as far down in my chair as I can for the rest of the performance, which the girl next to me spends in violent hysterics. It was probably one of the most embarrassing incidents of my life. And all this because of a sneeze.

* This is not his actual name. Alex, wherever you are, dude, seriously, I’m not sorry at all. You were a dick to me. I’m going to sneeze on your firstborn.

Scenes from an Awkward Childhood #2: “Potions”

By Shawn

When I was very young, I liked to mix various things around the house into “potions” and store them in jars we kept in the basement. Since at any given moment I was involved in a substantial number of scientific and thaumaturgical investigations, a lot of shelf space was going to this. This led to the following confrontation with my mother.

Mom: Shawn, honey, do you think we could throw away some of these potions?

Shawn: No, Mom, I need them.

Mom: Sweetie, you’ve got about thirty jars here. Aren’t there any that can go in the trash?

Shawn: No. I’m using all of them.

Mom: All of them? You’re using every single one?

Shawn: Yes. For my experiments.

Mom: Honey, what exactly are you doing with these?

Shawn: I feed them to Kelly.*

Mom: You feed them to the neighbor’s dog.

Shawn: Yes. Through the fence. She likes them.

Mom: Shawn.

Shawn: She likes them! I dip leaves in the potions, then I feed them to her. It makes her healthy!

Mom: Shawn—what exactly is in these potions?

Shawn: Baby powder. And glitter.

Mom: Oh no.

The fact that she made me throw them out was some bullshit, because the dog was fine. I will concede that I may have been mistaken about the medicinal benefits of my concoctions. Still, the bottom line was, I was perfectly happy feeding Kelly glitter-leaves, and she was perfectly happy having her insides bedazzled. It was a win/win arrangement.

* This was the dog’s actual name. Kelly, I know you can’t read this because you’re dead and illiterate, but dude, seriously, I am so sorry.

Scenes from an Awkward Childhood #1: Curiosity

By Shawn

As a child, I possessed a truly unfortunate combination of qualities. I was precocious, hyperactive, excessively imaginative, extremely sensitive, and overly philosophical. These traits led, on multiple occasions, to disaster. Here’s an example.

It is often a good thing for kids to be curious. Curiosity can draw children out of themselves, lead them to engage with the outside world, and inspire a lifetime love of learning. Another thing curiosity can do is make you wonder how it would feel to touch your friend’s eyeball. And so it was that four-year-old me, sitting next to my friend Joey* in pre-school, conceived a desire to jab him right in the eye. I abruptly set this plan into motion in the middle of story time. Joey, not being apprised in advance of my intention to brutally finger his iris, was taken entirely by surprise when I suddenly whirled around and jabbed the living shit out of his eye socket. And what I learned is, people hate that. Joey screamed, and the teacher, whose name I’m sure was not actually Mrs. Flyswatter, but that’s what I remember it being, immediately intervened.

When you are young, it is very, very important to understand the difference between doing something “on purpose” and doing it “by accident.” Because adults will frequently want to know why you did whatever you just did, and the wrong response can land you in quite a bit of trouble. This became a pressing issue when Mrs. Flyswatter asked me whether I poked Joey in the eye by accident or on purpose. A part of me recognized that what I had done was, in some sense, sociopathic, and that it was imperative to conceal the fact that I’d assaulted my friend’s eyeball intentionally. But I was always confused which phrase meant what. So when I started shrieking, “I did it on purpose! I did it on purpose!”, it did not produce the response I had been hoping for. I was dragged away from my mat yelling, and I wasn’t permitted to sit next to Joey for the rest of the year. At the time, this seemed like a gross injustice, because surely it wasn’t my fault I was too damn stupid to lie correctly. But in hindsight, fair enough, you know? An early sign that childhood was going to be chock-full of social misfires.

* This is not his real name. Dude, wherever you are, seriously, I am so sorry.