Snakes

I am and always have been a city boy, which, if you're from outside the city, is a bit weird, to say it nicely. I didn't realize that when I was a child though. I lived in a residential, non-urban area of the city and thought I was a normal American kid. I didn't know that I was supposed to like digging up snakes from the garden and then feeding those snakes to bigger snakes that I kept in a glass cage in my house. I also didn't realize that, as an American boy, I was supposed to be proud of the sound and smell of my own farts and that I was supposed to use cuss words before and after every noun and verb in my sentence. Some kids I grew up with knew this, but I was blind to it, as were many of the kids I grew up around. (Remember, my area was so oddly placed in an urban-suburban climate.) In fact, as I've reached adulthood I've realized that I was not nearly as off as some of them. Or maybe I've just normalized somehow. I'm not sure.

One would think that growing up in The Bronx, I'd have been a regular potty mouth. But I had a very proper Irish grandmother, educated in England and a mother like no other - both of whom had me convinced that I would be struck by lightning and be sent straight to hell if I had even so much as said "hell". I don't think my father even knew most of the bad words in English at that time. Now, thanks to cable, he's learned them. Of course my brothers and sisters were prohibited from using such words as well. I heard my friends say four-letter words all the time, but I just figured they were low-minded, Godless and classless. (Yes, I thought like that as a child. Amazing, I know.)

I recall having a huge fight with my friend, Frankie, when I was about five. He insisted that the word "darn" was not a bad word and I was sure it was one of those words that would force God to kill you. Frankie told me that his mother told him it was okay to say it and I told Frankie that he was a liar and that his mother was a nice person and would never say that.

Later that week, Frankie and his family moved to Long Island. I'm pretty sure it was because his parents were worried that I was retarded and it would rub off on Frankie - in a bad way.
I never saw Frankie again. It was traumatic at the time because although he was technically my second best friend after John, who was my first best friend, I secretly respected Frankie more because his parents spoke with a more mild Bronx accent. AND, they had oscars. Oscars are these really cool fish that eat goldfish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I loved going to Frankies house and watching the oscars eat the goldfish. Though I was basically a wus when it came to snakes, I was very much interested in seeing small animals like goldfish and grasshoppers eaten alive or tortured in some way. I felt sorry for them but at the same time I thought it was cool.

I had a friend - lets call him Pepe (as you might guess...his name would never have been Pepe, despite what your ideas about The Bronx might be) who was older than me and the brother of my future wife (or, more correctly, the girl I assumed would marry me when I was eighteen and old enough to support a family) loved to kill grasshoppers by filling pickle jars with water and leaving just enough air to form a one-inch bubble on the side and then to stick a grasshopper in the jar and close it. Then he (we) would watch the poor, desperate grasshopper swim to the air bubble and just at it reached it, Pepe would turn the bottle over and the hopper would have to swim across the bottle again! It was sad. It usually took the grasshopper about five minutes to die this way. Absolute torture. Pepe was a horrible boy. And I was worse for enjoying it and egging him on. I was the crowd for which he was playing and I wanted season tickets.

So, yeah. I was a snob, even at five. I didn't like the way my friend John's parents spoke. They sounded uneducated, even to my kindergarden ears. Doesn't that make me sound like a really obnoxious kid? Well, I wasn't. I was so nice to everyone. My mother had trained me to be really nice and to always say "no, thank you" even if I really wanted something. So, of course I would never say, "hey, Mrs. L. You talk like a moron". That just wasn't what I was about. Anyway, I liked Mr and Mrs L. I just didn't respect them.

I was supposed to talk about the snakes and my retarded cousins from Long Island who used to come to my house and dig them up. I'm too tired now, and a little drunk. (Hence, I feel free to call my friends and family such politically incorrect names as "retard".) I will write the Snake story tomorrow. Anyway, you're not missing much. It's not that interesting.