My whole life growing up I have always felt like a second class person. I always felt that I was shafted in favor of my brother and sister....granted this is only my opinion here.
When I was in the 7th grade...my family moved to Junction City because my dad was being sent to Vietnam. My mother was left with no money for the move and had to do all the packing and moving herself. This I am sure was very hard on her. She found a nice enough house with four bedrooms. This was to be the first time in my young life that I would have a room all to myself. I was thrilled with the thought. We we were showed the house my mother gave my sister first choice in bedrooms...she took the largest of the house meant as the master bedroom. There were two other bedrooms of equal size and a bedroom the size of a large closet...enough room for a twin bed and a dresser with not much else. You can guess that my mother took one of the mid sized rooms but she gave the other mid sized room to my brother. Now you would think that the natural order of things would be for my mother to take the larger room with my sister and myself each taking a mid sized room leaving the smaller room for my younger brother....yet I was left with making do with the tiny closet/bedroom. Still...I was thrilled with the idea of having a place all to myself and some private moments.
It was nice..I hate to say... that my father was gone. We didn't have to tip-toe around the house waiting for a fit of rage from him or many put-downs that we suffered through. I was always called stupid and that hurt a lot. I was told over and over how fat I was and how ashamed he was of me. So you can imagine that it was nice to not having to put up with that for awhile.
My sister got hand-me-down clothes from her cousin, and new things now and then...and they on the most part were very nice clothes the hand me downs. My brother got new things but I was given a sewing machine to make my own, for I did not fit in the hand me downs. I was just learning how to sew so my outfits were interesting to say the least....also I became a bit of a joke at school for my clothes were outstandingly home-made. I was also faced with coming up with the money for materials with making the clothes. I did this by babysitting the neighbor's children. The neighbors husband was out all hours of the night drinking while the wife worked. I never knew if I would have to face a drunk husband or a tired wife at the end of my long hours of babysitting. I would have to work till 11 or 12pm and was very tired for school the next day. The worse part of it all was that the house was swarming with roatches. Gosh I just hated those things. You could not even sit down with out one running over you...they were even overhead falling on you. I had horrible nightmares from that experience and to this day I find that I have somewhat of a phobia towards those bugs.
Being my father was away in Vietnam we were forced to write him letters. Can you imagine how hard it is to write to someone about your day to day life when you are just a child. Each week we were forced to write to him. He in return sent back letters that were very boring about just the day to day stuff there. You see..my father was stationed at a supply area and never seemed to be in any danger of seeing action while he was stationed there. I had heard that only one guy got hit in his unit and that was from a stray bullet the bounced around a bit before hitting him in his private parts...what a bummer of a deal for him. If writing letters was not bad enough...my father got a real to real tape recorder and player for us. We were now faced with each week coming up with 45 min or so of conversation to him to fill up the tapes. It got to be interesting....my brother read from his school books and I would play (and terribly so) song on a tiny portable organ. I was to suffer later in my older teen years with my father dragging out those tapes to play for company...here I was trying to play a song and singing along to it being showned to all who would listen...yes...I was the butt of his joke for many years.
My mother did not drive during that year...so my sister driving the family car for us...and yes she drove quite a bit for herself too...lol.There were many nights when my sister would sneek out of the house...after awhile my mother took it upon herself to nail my sisters windows down. This just made my sister crawl into my bedroom late at night when she was sneeking back in. My bed was under the window and would step on me when she came through the window.
I was tormented at school...every day on my walk to school there was a house that had a pet rooster...in the middle of the city mind you! Each day this rooster would take pleasure of chasing me a block or so. I hated that bird to no end. I had no better luck in school. With my handmade clothes and frumpy overweigh appearance...I found that I had no friends there.
Once I was faced with the school bully and she backed me into a corner in the school locker room. This girl always picked on me and got great pleasure in doing so. One day I found that I just could not take it anymore...so I called her a name. Boy did the shit hit the fan...she informed me that she and a group of her friends would be waiting for me after school. I found that this was true and ran to the school office seeking help from about 20 girls that were wanting to kick my butt just for the pure pleasure of it. The school office was of no help but offered for me to call home. My mother was no help either and just could not understand my fears and told me to just walk home. I waited for a very long time in the office and managed to sneek past the girls that afternoon. It was a very scary moment for me and yet a very sad one for my family could not be bothered to help me in time of need.
I would love to come home from school most afternoons and watch "dark shadows"..my first introduction to horror shows. I wonder if it gave me my love for Stephen King books in my later years.
Life was sad and yet still better then when my father was around. Then my father came back home from Vietnam and we were forced to move back on base. I was faced once again with sharing a room with my sister and dealing with that...and dealing with my father again.
I found that I was starting to seek love outside the house...in the form of sexual relationships. My first encounter (other then being finger banged by bobby baker when I was 13) was with a neighborhood boy called paul. He wanted to experience sex as I did so we sneeked out of the house late at night and meet under the large oak tree in a field behind our houses. He tried and tried to insert his tiny little weiner but it kept folding over. After several attemps he gave up. I...in my young mind thought that the experience would bring us closer together...if anything make up good friends...but his embarrasement over the whole thing made him treat me like a leaper. I was very hurt by that.
I sought new experiences in this dept with older G.I.'s..they were so horney that they had no problem poking it to a child that I was.
I discovered a couple of friends and found that life was getting better because I had someone to talk to. The beatles singing group was all the rage and we wanted to have beatles haircuts and sang all their songs. Everyone loved Paul with the beatles and George and John...no one cared for RIngo so I took up his cause and declared I wanted him in my childhood love match..giggle. In reality I wanted John for some reason but felt silly claiming him for he was a married beatle at the time. My afternoons was full of watching american bandstand at a neighbors house...singing songs with my friends and even tying a towel to a door know and pretending that I had a dance partner while I danced with the end of the towel. We would sit in the neighborhood playgrounds after dark and talk about what our wishes were for the future and what boy we would love to make it with. We would sneek out of school and catch the military bus to go to the main post area and bowl a few games. Skipping school was an art form and I became quite good at it. I did love art class but gym was a horror with the public showers and the laughing at my tubby body.
One time I heard that if you put an asprin in a soda you would get high off of it. Stupid me decide if one would get you high a whole bottle of asprin would really do the trick. I became terrible ill but couldn't tell my mother about the asprin slooshie that I made...it was so thick that you could spoon it out. That evening while I layed in bed looking down the hallway I saw all kinds of ghosts coming to me...freaked me out big time but I still did not tell a soul....I am surprised that I didn't kill myself with that experience.
Funny...I don't remember being hugged...told I was loved...tucked in at night..the normal things a child should have to feel wanted and loved. It was assumed at my childhood home that you never brought friends over....so as to not to bother my father (not to mention you never knew when he would go off on us or any friends we might have over). You never mentioned the abuse or the drinking for it would get my father in trouble with the army. Joys were found outside the home and with your friends.
My father was a very selfish person in many ways. He would buy lobster and eat it in front of us kids...while we had mac-n-cheese. When we were babies and there was only enough money for beer or milk for us children...my father got his beer. He got a new car about every year and yet I was forced to sew my own clothes if I was to have any. My mother had to ask friends for rides for us kids if we needed to go anywhere for my father was not to be bothered. When we had a birthday party we were told to set aside a gift we received to be used to give to another friends birthday party as a gift from ourselves for my mother didn't have the money to buy a gift. One of the things I have always wanted when I was a young girl was a Barbie doll. All my friends had one and I ached for one. I would go over to a friends house and play with their dolls....I would make tiny little clothes for their dolls...and ached for one of my own. All I had was a cheep "baby doll". You just can't make grown-up outfits for a baby doll...just nighties and diapers..etc. I know it is lame and childish to miss having a Barbie doll...but it is a memorie that sticks with me.
