Three memories

Chapter 1

Three memories haunt me like the vision of the man at the stairs in the movie poster for “The Exorcist”, meaning, they just stay there in my mind.

I guess haunted would be the wrong word to use to describe them. The three all represent failure of some sort, but they also represent hope. Why those three memories have stuck, I do not know. They are all of the same person. All from a time in my life when I have almost no memories. And they all bring smiles and melancholy when I think about them, even almost 30 years later.

The person in them is a girl. Her name is Heather. She was quite possibly the root of all my insanity. Not for anything she did, at least that I can remember. Instead, for the sheer magnitude of importance that I placed on her existence at a very young age.

I knew her, or knew of her at least, for three years. First grade. Second grade. And third grade. I don’t remember talking to her. Or hanging out with her. Nothing. But recent revelations about places I’d been and things I said would certainly not rule out that any of those things actually happened at some point. Maybe even in lots of detail. Probably not, however.

Those years of my life were kind of strange. Setting a tone, I believe, for the rest of them to follow.

I was labeled “smart” early on. And it turned out, I was much smarter than almost all my classmates at the large brick monstrosity of a school that I attended, old and full of rot, this thing was built right after World War I. It doesn’t exist anymore, but that’s ok.

My schooling started at a different school. Why? Because mom taught at the elementary school I was supposed to go to, and she did not want me to have the other kindergarten teacher because she sucked. So, I went to a school actually closer to my house, but not the one I was supposed to go to.

I have one memory of that school. Being in the field beside the school during recess. One guy had just bought Zips shoes. In the commercial, the kid who is wearing them can do all sorts of incredible things. One of them is to leap over a large bush. Well, the kid who got the shoes is bragging he can now do all of those things. Me, being the smartass I was, and still am, pointed at a bush in the yard. It was probably three foot tall, but I am remembering it from a kindergarteners perspective, so I could have been inches tall.

“Jump that, Derek!” I exclaimed.

The kid looked at me with shock. He ended up being the quarterback of the high school football team, but then, he was just a little kid.

“I, I, I, can’t do that,” he said.

“But you said you could do what the guy in the commercial does!” I yelled, puffing my chest in superiority. I had a problem with that as a kid.

“Um. Ok. I’ll try.” Derek finally said.

I was shocked. He’s actually going to do it?

Well, Derek ran right at the thing, leaped in the air and landed squarely in the bush. Got stuck even.

A teacher saw all of this. She rushed over.

“Why did you do that Derek?” she shrieked. Derek had ripped his pants a little and also had a little trickle of blood running down his arm from a branch or something cutting him.

“Randy told me to do it,” he whimpered pointing at me.

I was smiling. Looking around at all the kids. They were looking at me too. I wanted it to be awe. Well, whatever feeling a kindergartener would call it. Instead, they gave me looks of scorn.

“He did do that,” one girl said.

“It’s Randy’s fault!” a fat boy said with enthusiasm.

“Randy, did you tell Derek to do that?”

“Well, he said he could do it, because he’s got Zips on. I wanted to let him know that they really couldn’t give you powers like on TV.”

“Now Randy, you should know better than that. Derek was just proud of his new shoes.”

I looked at Derek. He was crying a little. He smiled at me when the teacher turned her back, sticking out his tongue. Round 1 went to me. Round 2 to Derek. I don’t remember if there was a Round 3. Unless being the school jock in high school was his victory dance. I played soccer. Not a lot of fans of soccer back then. Especially females. This was the South in the 1970s and 1980s, you’ll have to remember.

The next year, I was with a whole other batch of kids at the brick school.

That’s where I met Heather. I guess.