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Of Gods who would be men
May. 28th, 2021 03:53 pmWe could, if we felt uncharitable, review that loud first evening in Oklahoma, land of the Red Man. Interestingly, Red Men look pretty much like everybody else, unless you are talking about the Red Men of Barsoom, in which case the extra arms would be a give away. It wasn't the Red Barsoomians who had the extra arms. It was the Green Barsoomians. The Red Ones looked like Earthpeople, but really that is where the fantasy is.
That first night, Dec 31, 1968 was a loud, glass shattering, lengthy argument of a night. Simply put, Mother did NOT want to be there and was willing to kill her liver to prove it. Father knew this was where they needed to be, because it was the place where Uncle James had provided a job for them.
The job market in Indiana had dried up with the end of the last war. Steel and Agriculture were the two things that Indiana had going for it. In the 60's... the 1960's... Steel was being produced cheaper overseas and corporations had started to buy up the farms. Indiana was drying up, and soon enough the only money making businesses would be auto repair shops and touristy campgrounds in the beautiful Indiana landscape - and make no mistake. It is beautiful there.
The people are friendly, the world slower, the cuisine varied and interesting, the men are strong and brave and mostly built solid and slightly stupid from decades of butting their heads against a corporate wall and the women are strong and brave and mostly built like farm implements, just like their mamma was. People there like their privacy and don't like folks asking them personal things like "Who did you vote for?" "How much money do you make in a year?" "Where do you live?" "How much for the whole family?" That's liable to end you up with a shotgun in your face. Hoosiers (as folks in Indiana are called) are very private folks. But Friendly.
That first night in Oklahoma was not friendly. Even the neighbors in the apartment complex thought so, banging on the wall asking Mother to 'Shut the hell up.' To which Mother would respond in any number of Indiana slang words which, coincidentally, are the same slang words in many places on the earth.
Eventually, the effect of a twelve hour car ride, combined with a four hour drinking binge took it's toll and Mother faded to sleep. Blissfully? No one knows. Her dreams and demons were her own. But she did snore, loudly. Not as loud as the argument had been, but loud enough that Glenn had difficulty going to sleep.
He wasn't sure if his brothers slept. He couldn't see them or hear them. He tended to sleep with the covers over his head because if they couldn't see you, the monsters couldn't eat you. He also tended to breath very shallow and slowly, because even if the monsters couldn't see you, they might hear you and then they would indeed eat you.
Were the monsters real? They were real to 11 year old Glenn and that is real enough to terrify him. In Indiana, they would inhabit the corner of the room where the clothes rod hung. They would peek out at him from the shirts hanging there every night and he would sometimes hear them whispering to him.
On some occasion, he would see their faces in the window, or he would hear them follow him as he walked through the campus of the All Male Fine Art college at night when he walked home from his cub scout meeting, or if he had stayed late at the library.
As he got older, he learned to fight the monsters and on occasion win the battle. They would the fade back to the many chambered recesses of his memory and imagination or whatever other dimension they came from. When he reached his 60s, he could still feel them, lurking in the background. He still had nights when he could see them peaking out of the closet or hear them rumbling about in the attic. Sometimes he heard them whispering to him.
We never, ever, never truly leave our childhood behind, no matter how tightly we wrap them in bubble wrap and duct tape and toss them into the deepest pit in the deepest lake we can find, weighted down with the day to day events that come and go into our lives and obscured by the hundreds of references and faces that come to us and ask for everything under the sun from laundry to bringing in even more money, likes some aged and bent Rocking Horse Winner. It's a short story by D. H. Lawrence, published in 1926. It's aged a bit, but then haven't we all. It changed Glenn's life a bit. It might change yours.
Life settled down for the boys and their Parents. Father went to work, which coincidentally was right across the street from the apartment. It was a low building made out of red painted brick and looked to be about a mile square to Glenn's eyes. Mother did what Mother did. She cooked, she shopped, did things sober people do when they are taking care of four boys and also did things less sober people did at night. It helped her sleep. School, you might be wondering? That was out for session in Oklahoma, and wouldn't start until the end of the first week of 1969.
Things that happened in 1969: The Beatles stopped touring. Boeing, an aircraft company, introduced the 747 Jumbo jet. Concorde, a jet liner that flew faster than twice the speed of sound, had it's first test flight and the music festival Woodstock happened at Max Yasgur's farm, where over 400 thousand people, most below the age of 30 gathered to listing to some incredible rock and roll. There has never been anything like it. Because it was also 400 thousand of the most infantile messy people to ever destroy an ecosystem. It was love, peace and toss your trash anywhere because someone else will pick it up.
1969 was the year that Glenn found out that bias didn't just belong to race. In fact, he didn't even know what racial bias was. He had been raised in a mixed neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks in his little village in Indiana. He only knew that people were people, kids were kids and if they looked different, then Mother would box your ears and tell you that they were just people, after all. No better, no worse. Just people.
And so, it was with some bewilderment and some tears and some anger and some frustration that little 11 year old Glenn found out that because he sounded funny - who knew the Midwest had an accent - and he looked a little funny - he had thick glasses due to amblyopia, also known as lazy eye. Oh and he was nearsighted too, and because he was skinny and his clothes were old and his shoes were old and, well... he was the new kid, Glenn found out that all this meant that he was the target du jour. And not just by the other children, either.
In 6th grade, while the children back in Indiana were being taught the beginning of algebra, Mrs. Pendley, a wrinkled up spinsterish sort of hate bucket, was teaching, among reading, writing and 'rithmatic, she was teaching square dancing. This was a thing. This really happened.
Glenn was not known for his grace. He wasn't clumsy, but his sense of rhythm was missing something known as a beat. The rest of his family, barring Mother, could not only carry a tune, they could play an instrument and read music and follow a metronome with some precision.
Glenn was lucky if he could count to sixty and arrive at that number at the same time as a ticking clock.
Now besides his accent, his clothing, his face, his general look being scrutinized and derided, the fact that he, as a child, did not know how to do-si-do was hil air e ous to the other children of Mrs. Pendley's class.
And then there was the 'incident'. Every week, on Wednesday, the class held a spelling contest. Boys against the girls, because this was an area of the country where progressive was a word that nobody could spell. It was the part of the country that sat in the middle and if you waited long enough, say 6 to 10 years, what was fashion on the East and or West coast would eventually roll to the middle of the country like ground beef in a street taco. To say that Oklahoma was behind the times would be an insult to the word time. And the word behind.
Every Wednesday, Mrs. Pendley would pull out her evil book of spells and divide the room in half. She was born around the 15th century, so segregation was in her very bones and she was really, really good at finding those she felt didn't belong. One could say she had a nose for it, if one got past the thing in the middle of her face and felt it had a use other than casting aspersions.
Glenn's desk sat way over next to a window. That was fine with him. He liked windows. He could look out a window all day and be somewhere else, rather than here in the classroom with a bunch of kids who did not like him in the least. Adding to the growing list of reasons to hate Glenn was the fact that he had learned to read a solid four years before some of these children had learned that you don't poop in your hands and make art with it. He excelled at spelling.
This also irritated Mrs. Pendley, because Glenn was not one of those easily pushed into submission, pretty much because he knew who he was and was getting close to knowing what he was and Mrs. Pendley was just some wrinkled old tenured teacher who felt she was the queen of her kingdom in this classroom.
And so it was on a particular Wednesday when the boys soundly trounced the girls with the winning word of, ironically, 'Jealous', that a boy sitting behind Glenn whistled loudly and proudly at the mention of which side of the room had won that days contest. The winner of that contest got to go down to the gym with the loosing side and square-dance. Seriously. It did not matter if you won, or you lost, you got to square-dance and these morons felt that was something to be proud of, own and whistle at.
Once the air had left the pursed lips, it could not be pulled back. It could not be retrieved from the world of Mrs. Pendley's kingdom, and could not be a greater offender than it was.
Now, you must understand, in Mrs. Pendley's kingdom, you could not walk straight from your desk to hers to hand in your work. You had to stand up straight, turn like the automaton you were supposed to be, walk to the back of the class and take the longest way to her throne that you could, hugging the outside wall like a mouse afraid to be seen by a vulture. Why was this? No idea. She took that to her grave once someone got brave enough to drive the stake through her heart.
You also could not chew gum in her class. Your shoes had to be shined in her class. Your hair had to be to her satisfaction in her class. If you wore a dress, it had to be exactly to her specifications. If you were jeans you were sent home to put on proper attire. No dirty hands, no dirty faces, no dirt anywhere. No candy, no snacks, no laughter, unless it was AT someone, no singing, no joking, and certainly never, ever any whistling.
The blame for the whistling was settled firmly on Glenn's slim shoulders. Why? Because the boy behind Glenn said that he had heard Glenn do the whistling, the little lying liar. A girl across the classroom said she had heard Glenn do it, too.
Under Mrs. Pendley basilisktic stare, glare and questioning Glenn did not budge from his position. Not only did he NOT whistle, but he did not know who did, since the whistle came from behind him and oh yes, you weren't allowed to turn in your seat to look behind you in Mrs. Pendley's class.
Mrs. Pendley did not believe him. In fact, she didn't believe him so hard that he was sentenced to staying in the classroom, by himself, during lunches and recess and he would have to miss every square-dancing they held. This was their idea of punishment. You were warned that they were a bit behind the times.
Glenn was quite happy with this arrangement. Even when he lived in Indiana, he was pretty much alone during lunches and recesses. His childhood chums were scattered to other classes with other time period and played things like foot ball, tether ball and badminton. Glenn liked dodge-ball, because he was small and thin and quick, and baseball, because his body was built in such a way that he would someday become a power hitter, like his Grandfather Joe who was the shortstop for the Terre Haute Mudhens and headed for the Big League before he had to give up that dream and chose to raise his family rather than go on the road for exhibition games. Alone did not mean lonely, and Glenn was well aware of this fact. Give him a book and his imagination and he was very content to sit quietly and do what he wanted to do all along. Be left alone.
It all came to a head when one girl in the class, a girl with the name of Wendy, just like the one in Peter Pan, which was one of Glenn's favorite stories. He had in fact, seen the Mary Martin version on Television just a few years past, in 1960 and became enchanted with the character. A boy who never grew up and could fly! Amazing and fascinating at the same time.
It was Mrs. Pendley's Wendy who came into the room while Glenn was focused on reading and asked him without pausing for introduction "Why don't you just tell Mrs. Pendley that you did it, so you could come back to square-dance?"
It is possible that Wendy had a small crush on Glenn and she sincerely wanted him to be able to square-dance with her. It is just as possible that she was wanting to cause some sort of trouble as only young girls can. Glenn's answer was a definitive "Because I didn't."
Wendy heard "Because I did", because that is exactly what she wanted to hear. In the Midwest of the United States it is fairly well known and if it isn't why not, that the final consonant is quite often swallowed and never heard from again. This is just how the folks there speak. Everyone there would have heard that n't, but not here. Not in Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain and is blamed upon the nearest scapegoat.
Faster than you could say 'and then she went' Wendy went out of the room crowing that "He said it! He said he did it!". She would have run out of the room, but seeing as it was Mrs. Pendley's room, she very cautiously walked around the room, twice just to make sure she was doing it correctly and then do-si-doed out the door and down the hall. Her crowing was at half volume because in Mrs. Pendley's class, nobody spoke above a sotto voce, which means Stage Whisper. It can be heard, and perfectly understood, unless you are from the Midwest where they swallow half their words, but the volume is never, ever loud enough to cause s dried up husk of a spinster to have anything even resembling a heartbeat.
J'accuse went up, and Glenn was the one headed for the gallows, and by gallows it meant swats, and by swats it meant that the principle of the school was going to call Mother, let her know that Glenn was a miscreant and that she was going to have to come to school with him the very next day to watch his punishment and sign a paper indicating that there had been no panky distributed with the hanky and that Glenn had not suffered unduly for his crime of being from a different state and therefore the easy target of some rather mean and spiteful junior square-dancers who had no idea what a variable was.
It was that very next day that Mother arrived at the school with Glenn and went to the Principle's office so that punishment could be handed down.
Mother was not happy because she believe Glenn when he had said that it wasn't he who had whistled. Mother was not happy because she had been a victim of such abuse as a child, as she was not only a catatonia sufferer but also had the misfortune of being born half black. Misfortune is not a good word here, but in that part of the country with those sort of white country bumpkins it is the only word to be used. She had misfortunes and they made her a stronger person. If you want to stand on a soapbox and tell me it is NOT a misfortune to having been born half of a different race, then you have no idea what that feels like. Look it up, someday, if you want an education on how biased all races are. it is not only white folks who have looked down on the 'half breed', it was also the Native Americans, or Indians as they used to be called. It was also the black race who made those of the mulatto race feel unwelcome. So, when it comes to racial Bias and prejudice, Mother could have talked about it in spades.
She didn't. She was better than that. She knew that people were people and that there were good people and there were less than good people but they all had their story. Drunk or not, Mother was a good human who occasionally did less than good things. Just like everybody else, and, in Glenn's eyes, Mother was better than everybody else.
On the day of the Swats, Mother walked in to the Principle's office and demanded to talk to the teacher who had lain this accusation at her child's feet. The Principle said that was not possible because that teacher had called out sick that day. "How odd." Mother said. "I am not allowed to have conversation with the teacher who set my son up for corporal punishment."
Regardless, the Principle explained to her that, if it were up to him, nothing would happen, but it wasn't up to him. Glenn had broken the rules and now he must suffer the consequences for that breakage.
Mother explained back that Glenn had not done what he was accused of.
The Principle was very sorry but rules were rules. The principle was, in the vernacular of the day, a wiener. Spineless and useless, under the thumb of Mrs. Pendley because who knows? Regardless, the swats were coming.
Mother looked at Glenn and said "You understand, Glenn, that I believe you. And in the end, that is really all that matters, because these people are stupid."
Glenn nodded and said "It's okay Mom. I won't feel a thing."
And it was true. Glenn's ass had, through years of abuse from his Mother, grown used to to pain. It was as if he had developed ass callouses. Every time the Principle swung that oaken paddle with the seven holes in it so you could hear it whoosh through the air, and every time it make contact with Glenn, he said nothing. No tears were shed. He knew not to laugh because that would make it worse, so he stood there, bent at the waist, holding his ankles, while a coward spanked him with the impotent fury of the lost.
It was on this day that Glenn learned an incredibly important lesson. It was a lesson that, for decades and decades to come, would serve him well. It was this, simply: "Life isn't fair. Nobody said it would be. Ever."
However, that did not stop Glenn from hating Mrs. Pendley with all his heart for the rest of his life. It is this, probably more than anything, that would color his perception of the female gender and keep him from ascending to godhood far earlier than he did.
In all his life, it was this moment in time that he carried with him as an example of injustice and solidified in him the ideal to never, ever, ever never, unjustly accuse someone, to lie to anyone if he could help it (you know you sometimes have to lie to folks. The joke "does this dress make me look fat" is based on it), and to try to be the best person he could be, all the time.
In matter of fact, he was able to carry the first two to fruition. He never unjustly accused anyone. He did, however, Justly accuse folks because he could prove his accusation. He also never lied to anyone without just cause or in a harmful way. He worked hard to be a good person.
But the best he could do, as a person, was to barely conceal his distrust, his dislike, his distaste and in some cases his bare knuckled anger and hatred of some people. This was a problem that he would carry for the rest of his life.
He had moments of being better. Just so you know. He wasn't a complete bastard. Well.. he was technically. But he tried to be the best person he could. He just failed sometimes.
I'm tired now, but I'll be back. Let's talk about some of the Magic in his life next time, okay? This was one of the hard ones to talk about.
That first night, Dec 31, 1968 was a loud, glass shattering, lengthy argument of a night. Simply put, Mother did NOT want to be there and was willing to kill her liver to prove it. Father knew this was where they needed to be, because it was the place where Uncle James had provided a job for them.
The job market in Indiana had dried up with the end of the last war. Steel and Agriculture were the two things that Indiana had going for it. In the 60's... the 1960's... Steel was being produced cheaper overseas and corporations had started to buy up the farms. Indiana was drying up, and soon enough the only money making businesses would be auto repair shops and touristy campgrounds in the beautiful Indiana landscape - and make no mistake. It is beautiful there.
The people are friendly, the world slower, the cuisine varied and interesting, the men are strong and brave and mostly built solid and slightly stupid from decades of butting their heads against a corporate wall and the women are strong and brave and mostly built like farm implements, just like their mamma was. People there like their privacy and don't like folks asking them personal things like "Who did you vote for?" "How much money do you make in a year?" "Where do you live?" "How much for the whole family?" That's liable to end you up with a shotgun in your face. Hoosiers (as folks in Indiana are called) are very private folks. But Friendly.
That first night in Oklahoma was not friendly. Even the neighbors in the apartment complex thought so, banging on the wall asking Mother to 'Shut the hell up.' To which Mother would respond in any number of Indiana slang words which, coincidentally, are the same slang words in many places on the earth.
Eventually, the effect of a twelve hour car ride, combined with a four hour drinking binge took it's toll and Mother faded to sleep. Blissfully? No one knows. Her dreams and demons were her own. But she did snore, loudly. Not as loud as the argument had been, but loud enough that Glenn had difficulty going to sleep.
He wasn't sure if his brothers slept. He couldn't see them or hear them. He tended to sleep with the covers over his head because if they couldn't see you, the monsters couldn't eat you. He also tended to breath very shallow and slowly, because even if the monsters couldn't see you, they might hear you and then they would indeed eat you.
Were the monsters real? They were real to 11 year old Glenn and that is real enough to terrify him. In Indiana, they would inhabit the corner of the room where the clothes rod hung. They would peek out at him from the shirts hanging there every night and he would sometimes hear them whispering to him.
On some occasion, he would see their faces in the window, or he would hear them follow him as he walked through the campus of the All Male Fine Art college at night when he walked home from his cub scout meeting, or if he had stayed late at the library.
As he got older, he learned to fight the monsters and on occasion win the battle. They would the fade back to the many chambered recesses of his memory and imagination or whatever other dimension they came from. When he reached his 60s, he could still feel them, lurking in the background. He still had nights when he could see them peaking out of the closet or hear them rumbling about in the attic. Sometimes he heard them whispering to him.
We never, ever, never truly leave our childhood behind, no matter how tightly we wrap them in bubble wrap and duct tape and toss them into the deepest pit in the deepest lake we can find, weighted down with the day to day events that come and go into our lives and obscured by the hundreds of references and faces that come to us and ask for everything under the sun from laundry to bringing in even more money, likes some aged and bent Rocking Horse Winner. It's a short story by D. H. Lawrence, published in 1926. It's aged a bit, but then haven't we all. It changed Glenn's life a bit. It might change yours.
Life settled down for the boys and their Parents. Father went to work, which coincidentally was right across the street from the apartment. It was a low building made out of red painted brick and looked to be about a mile square to Glenn's eyes. Mother did what Mother did. She cooked, she shopped, did things sober people do when they are taking care of four boys and also did things less sober people did at night. It helped her sleep. School, you might be wondering? That was out for session in Oklahoma, and wouldn't start until the end of the first week of 1969.
Things that happened in 1969: The Beatles stopped touring. Boeing, an aircraft company, introduced the 747 Jumbo jet. Concorde, a jet liner that flew faster than twice the speed of sound, had it's first test flight and the music festival Woodstock happened at Max Yasgur's farm, where over 400 thousand people, most below the age of 30 gathered to listing to some incredible rock and roll. There has never been anything like it. Because it was also 400 thousand of the most infantile messy people to ever destroy an ecosystem. It was love, peace and toss your trash anywhere because someone else will pick it up.
1969 was the year that Glenn found out that bias didn't just belong to race. In fact, he didn't even know what racial bias was. He had been raised in a mixed neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks in his little village in Indiana. He only knew that people were people, kids were kids and if they looked different, then Mother would box your ears and tell you that they were just people, after all. No better, no worse. Just people.
And so, it was with some bewilderment and some tears and some anger and some frustration that little 11 year old Glenn found out that because he sounded funny - who knew the Midwest had an accent - and he looked a little funny - he had thick glasses due to amblyopia, also known as lazy eye. Oh and he was nearsighted too, and because he was skinny and his clothes were old and his shoes were old and, well... he was the new kid, Glenn found out that all this meant that he was the target du jour. And not just by the other children, either.
In 6th grade, while the children back in Indiana were being taught the beginning of algebra, Mrs. Pendley, a wrinkled up spinsterish sort of hate bucket, was teaching, among reading, writing and 'rithmatic, she was teaching square dancing. This was a thing. This really happened.
Glenn was not known for his grace. He wasn't clumsy, but his sense of rhythm was missing something known as a beat. The rest of his family, barring Mother, could not only carry a tune, they could play an instrument and read music and follow a metronome with some precision.
Glenn was lucky if he could count to sixty and arrive at that number at the same time as a ticking clock.
Now besides his accent, his clothing, his face, his general look being scrutinized and derided, the fact that he, as a child, did not know how to do-si-do was hil air e ous to the other children of Mrs. Pendley's class.
And then there was the 'incident'. Every week, on Wednesday, the class held a spelling contest. Boys against the girls, because this was an area of the country where progressive was a word that nobody could spell. It was the part of the country that sat in the middle and if you waited long enough, say 6 to 10 years, what was fashion on the East and or West coast would eventually roll to the middle of the country like ground beef in a street taco. To say that Oklahoma was behind the times would be an insult to the word time. And the word behind.
Every Wednesday, Mrs. Pendley would pull out her evil book of spells and divide the room in half. She was born around the 15th century, so segregation was in her very bones and she was really, really good at finding those she felt didn't belong. One could say she had a nose for it, if one got past the thing in the middle of her face and felt it had a use other than casting aspersions.
Glenn's desk sat way over next to a window. That was fine with him. He liked windows. He could look out a window all day and be somewhere else, rather than here in the classroom with a bunch of kids who did not like him in the least. Adding to the growing list of reasons to hate Glenn was the fact that he had learned to read a solid four years before some of these children had learned that you don't poop in your hands and make art with it. He excelled at spelling.
This also irritated Mrs. Pendley, because Glenn was not one of those easily pushed into submission, pretty much because he knew who he was and was getting close to knowing what he was and Mrs. Pendley was just some wrinkled old tenured teacher who felt she was the queen of her kingdom in this classroom.
And so it was on a particular Wednesday when the boys soundly trounced the girls with the winning word of, ironically, 'Jealous', that a boy sitting behind Glenn whistled loudly and proudly at the mention of which side of the room had won that days contest. The winner of that contest got to go down to the gym with the loosing side and square-dance. Seriously. It did not matter if you won, or you lost, you got to square-dance and these morons felt that was something to be proud of, own and whistle at.
Once the air had left the pursed lips, it could not be pulled back. It could not be retrieved from the world of Mrs. Pendley's kingdom, and could not be a greater offender than it was.
Now, you must understand, in Mrs. Pendley's kingdom, you could not walk straight from your desk to hers to hand in your work. You had to stand up straight, turn like the automaton you were supposed to be, walk to the back of the class and take the longest way to her throne that you could, hugging the outside wall like a mouse afraid to be seen by a vulture. Why was this? No idea. She took that to her grave once someone got brave enough to drive the stake through her heart.
You also could not chew gum in her class. Your shoes had to be shined in her class. Your hair had to be to her satisfaction in her class. If you wore a dress, it had to be exactly to her specifications. If you were jeans you were sent home to put on proper attire. No dirty hands, no dirty faces, no dirt anywhere. No candy, no snacks, no laughter, unless it was AT someone, no singing, no joking, and certainly never, ever any whistling.
The blame for the whistling was settled firmly on Glenn's slim shoulders. Why? Because the boy behind Glenn said that he had heard Glenn do the whistling, the little lying liar. A girl across the classroom said she had heard Glenn do it, too.
Under Mrs. Pendley basilisktic stare, glare and questioning Glenn did not budge from his position. Not only did he NOT whistle, but he did not know who did, since the whistle came from behind him and oh yes, you weren't allowed to turn in your seat to look behind you in Mrs. Pendley's class.
Mrs. Pendley did not believe him. In fact, she didn't believe him so hard that he was sentenced to staying in the classroom, by himself, during lunches and recess and he would have to miss every square-dancing they held. This was their idea of punishment. You were warned that they were a bit behind the times.
Glenn was quite happy with this arrangement. Even when he lived in Indiana, he was pretty much alone during lunches and recesses. His childhood chums were scattered to other classes with other time period and played things like foot ball, tether ball and badminton. Glenn liked dodge-ball, because he was small and thin and quick, and baseball, because his body was built in such a way that he would someday become a power hitter, like his Grandfather Joe who was the shortstop for the Terre Haute Mudhens and headed for the Big League before he had to give up that dream and chose to raise his family rather than go on the road for exhibition games. Alone did not mean lonely, and Glenn was well aware of this fact. Give him a book and his imagination and he was very content to sit quietly and do what he wanted to do all along. Be left alone.
It all came to a head when one girl in the class, a girl with the name of Wendy, just like the one in Peter Pan, which was one of Glenn's favorite stories. He had in fact, seen the Mary Martin version on Television just a few years past, in 1960 and became enchanted with the character. A boy who never grew up and could fly! Amazing and fascinating at the same time.
It was Mrs. Pendley's Wendy who came into the room while Glenn was focused on reading and asked him without pausing for introduction "Why don't you just tell Mrs. Pendley that you did it, so you could come back to square-dance?"
It is possible that Wendy had a small crush on Glenn and she sincerely wanted him to be able to square-dance with her. It is just as possible that she was wanting to cause some sort of trouble as only young girls can. Glenn's answer was a definitive "Because I didn't."
Wendy heard "Because I did", because that is exactly what she wanted to hear. In the Midwest of the United States it is fairly well known and if it isn't why not, that the final consonant is quite often swallowed and never heard from again. This is just how the folks there speak. Everyone there would have heard that n't, but not here. Not in Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain and is blamed upon the nearest scapegoat.
Faster than you could say 'and then she went' Wendy went out of the room crowing that "He said it! He said he did it!". She would have run out of the room, but seeing as it was Mrs. Pendley's room, she very cautiously walked around the room, twice just to make sure she was doing it correctly and then do-si-doed out the door and down the hall. Her crowing was at half volume because in Mrs. Pendley's class, nobody spoke above a sotto voce, which means Stage Whisper. It can be heard, and perfectly understood, unless you are from the Midwest where they swallow half their words, but the volume is never, ever loud enough to cause s dried up husk of a spinster to have anything even resembling a heartbeat.
J'accuse went up, and Glenn was the one headed for the gallows, and by gallows it meant swats, and by swats it meant that the principle of the school was going to call Mother, let her know that Glenn was a miscreant and that she was going to have to come to school with him the very next day to watch his punishment and sign a paper indicating that there had been no panky distributed with the hanky and that Glenn had not suffered unduly for his crime of being from a different state and therefore the easy target of some rather mean and spiteful junior square-dancers who had no idea what a variable was.
It was that very next day that Mother arrived at the school with Glenn and went to the Principle's office so that punishment could be handed down.
Mother was not happy because she believe Glenn when he had said that it wasn't he who had whistled. Mother was not happy because she had been a victim of such abuse as a child, as she was not only a catatonia sufferer but also had the misfortune of being born half black. Misfortune is not a good word here, but in that part of the country with those sort of white country bumpkins it is the only word to be used. She had misfortunes and they made her a stronger person. If you want to stand on a soapbox and tell me it is NOT a misfortune to having been born half of a different race, then you have no idea what that feels like. Look it up, someday, if you want an education on how biased all races are. it is not only white folks who have looked down on the 'half breed', it was also the Native Americans, or Indians as they used to be called. It was also the black race who made those of the mulatto race feel unwelcome. So, when it comes to racial Bias and prejudice, Mother could have talked about it in spades.
She didn't. She was better than that. She knew that people were people and that there were good people and there were less than good people but they all had their story. Drunk or not, Mother was a good human who occasionally did less than good things. Just like everybody else, and, in Glenn's eyes, Mother was better than everybody else.
On the day of the Swats, Mother walked in to the Principle's office and demanded to talk to the teacher who had lain this accusation at her child's feet. The Principle said that was not possible because that teacher had called out sick that day. "How odd." Mother said. "I am not allowed to have conversation with the teacher who set my son up for corporal punishment."
Regardless, the Principle explained to her that, if it were up to him, nothing would happen, but it wasn't up to him. Glenn had broken the rules and now he must suffer the consequences for that breakage.
Mother explained back that Glenn had not done what he was accused of.
The Principle was very sorry but rules were rules. The principle was, in the vernacular of the day, a wiener. Spineless and useless, under the thumb of Mrs. Pendley because who knows? Regardless, the swats were coming.
Mother looked at Glenn and said "You understand, Glenn, that I believe you. And in the end, that is really all that matters, because these people are stupid."
Glenn nodded and said "It's okay Mom. I won't feel a thing."
And it was true. Glenn's ass had, through years of abuse from his Mother, grown used to to pain. It was as if he had developed ass callouses. Every time the Principle swung that oaken paddle with the seven holes in it so you could hear it whoosh through the air, and every time it make contact with Glenn, he said nothing. No tears were shed. He knew not to laugh because that would make it worse, so he stood there, bent at the waist, holding his ankles, while a coward spanked him with the impotent fury of the lost.
It was on this day that Glenn learned an incredibly important lesson. It was a lesson that, for decades and decades to come, would serve him well. It was this, simply: "Life isn't fair. Nobody said it would be. Ever."
However, that did not stop Glenn from hating Mrs. Pendley with all his heart for the rest of his life. It is this, probably more than anything, that would color his perception of the female gender and keep him from ascending to godhood far earlier than he did.
In all his life, it was this moment in time that he carried with him as an example of injustice and solidified in him the ideal to never, ever, ever never, unjustly accuse someone, to lie to anyone if he could help it (you know you sometimes have to lie to folks. The joke "does this dress make me look fat" is based on it), and to try to be the best person he could be, all the time.
In matter of fact, he was able to carry the first two to fruition. He never unjustly accused anyone. He did, however, Justly accuse folks because he could prove his accusation. He also never lied to anyone without just cause or in a harmful way. He worked hard to be a good person.
But the best he could do, as a person, was to barely conceal his distrust, his dislike, his distaste and in some cases his bare knuckled anger and hatred of some people. This was a problem that he would carry for the rest of his life.
He had moments of being better. Just so you know. He wasn't a complete bastard. Well.. he was technically. But he tried to be the best person he could. He just failed sometimes.
I'm tired now, but I'll be back. Let's talk about some of the Magic in his life next time, okay? This was one of the hard ones to talk about.
