This Christmas, I had a chance to meet Santa Claus. This was a very exciting event for me. Even though we were Jewish atheists, my parents still allowed me to believe in Santa Claus. He was the closest thing I had to the idea of God. He knew if you were bad or good and brought wonderful new toys to play with.
I waited in line to meet Santa with great excitement and awe. He gave me a big smile and lifted me up to his lap with a "Ho, ho, ho." He asked me some questions, and seemed delighted at my answers. I really liked Santa.
As we talked, I saw that he had a piece of tape stuck on his beard. He probably didn't know it was there. I reached up to remove it, and his whole beard came off! I was dejected to learn that Santa was a fake.
AGE 4
At age four, I proclaimed to all my family and friends that I was going to die in a car accident when I was nineteen. I think this may have been my way to encourage people to talk about death. Even my richest sources of information were reluctant to discuss the topic. However, I was intrigued by the idea that people could just completely disappear. On my third birthday, I had realized I was a being in time, and now came the knowledge that I wasn't even going to be here one day. Every single person was going to die. What an intriguing concept.
Obviously, my death prophecy didn’t take place, although Diane, my best friend from age four, did end up dying in a car accident when she was nineteen.
Our grandmother lived just down the street. Every morning, my sister and I would walk to her house and stand at the back door chanting, "We want breakfast! We want breakfast!" She would welcome us with a loving smile, and serve us scrambled eggs, toast, and a few drops of coffee in a cup of warm, sugary milk.
My grandmother loved to feed the birds and squirrels. I also learned to relate to these little creatures. I had a favorite squirrel, Timmy, who would follow me around the yard gently taking peanuts from my hand. Once I even let him into my grandmother's house. She was not too thrilled about this. He was, after all, a wild squirrel. Fortunately, he behaved himself and left quietly.
CLICK HERE to watch a film of my first five years of happy childhood. The older girl is my sister, who you can see was very patient.
It was time for my sister and I to get our measles vaccinations. We were going to a clinic where the shots were being given to a large group of kids all at once. During the drive, my 6-year-old sister was getting more and more nervous about the impending injection.
I, on the other hand, was feeling quite brave about it all. I took over the role of big sister, and proceeded to give some wise advice about getting shots. "It will happen so fast, you won't even feel it. There's no reason to be scared about a little shot." I was enjoying this new position of authority, and used it to preach a wonderful sermon about the importance of giving up fear. My parents in the front seat were clearly impressed with my maturity, as was I. This may have been my first tangible experience of pride.
When we arrived at the clinic, I don't know what happened to my little wise soul. All my bravado fell away, and I was overcome with terror. "Oh no! A shot!!!" Screaming at the top of my lungs, I ran to hide in a corner.
On this day, I learned that it is much easier to give advice than to follow it.
AGE 5
Kindergarten had been easy and fun, consisting mainly of games, naps and cookies. But now I was in first grade. This was where my rebellious nature first expressed itself into the world. I refused to do homework. I didn't want to do it, and I wouldn't do it.
Part of the problem was that I already knew most of what was being taught. I was reading on a fourth grade level. In fact, the teacher often asked me to help the other students with their reading. You might think that would have made it easier for me to zip through the assignments, but it didn't work that way. I was bored by it all.
During this time, the word lazy was introduced to my world. My teacher told me I was lazy, and my parents told me I was lazy. Looking back, it is remarkable how much of my adult life was spent trying to convince the world and myself that I'm not!
Concerned about my poor showing in school, my parents took me to have my IQ professionally tested. My mother had previously been tested with a 160 IQ, and was a member of Mensa. She was much relieved when I surpassed the test boundary of 160.
This meant there was no excuse for my refusal to do schoolwork. A new battle ensued. At one point, my parents told me that if I brought home one more note from school, I would be severely punished. So, when my teacher handed me the next note, I didn't bring it home. Instead, I put the envelope in my coat pocket and conveniently forgot all about it. The next day, I told my first outright lie.
As I was leaving the classroom that afternoon, my first-grade teacher asked if I had given her note to my parents. I lied and said "Yes." Then she asked if they had sent back any response, and I replied, "No."
Before this I had never really considered blatant lying as a viable alternative to getting in trouble. I was surprised by how easy it had been to lie, although there was a definite uncomfortable knot in my stomach at the same time. What if my teacher had asked a specific question in the letter and was expecting an answer? Unfortunately, I had forgotten to at least read the note myself. Anyway, it was still in the pocket of my coat that was hanging in the hallway, so I planned to open and read it later just in case.
The teacher didn't say anything more, and I was just turning around to leave, thinking that I’d gotten away with the deception, when one of my classmates came running into the room with my still unopened envelope. It had fallen onto the hallway floor through a hole in my coat pocket.
The teacher took the envelope and looked at it. She rose up and pointed her finger at me. "Now you're really going to get it."
As she walked out the door, I followed, begging her not to get me in trouble. But she wanted to teach me a lesson. She wanted me to be scared. After all, at age five I had just lied to her face. While walking up the school stairway, she continued to describe all the trouble I was going to be in. I stayed at the bottom of the stairs, crying and pleading for mercy, hoping to avoid the inevitable spanking. It didn't work.
I think this early lesson may have been the one that taught me not to lie. If so, I will always be grateful to my first-grade teacher – and to myself for making this mistake that got me caught early enough to learn an important lesson.
AGE 6
One of my first memories of jealousy happened when I was 6 years old. We weren't quite ready to move into our new, improved neighborhood yet, but the school semester was beginning. It didn't make sense to spend one month in the Detroit school and then change to a school in the suburb of Southfield, so Frona Foner came into the picture. I can’t disguise such a good name. Frona Foner was a teacher at the elementary school we were going to attend in Southfield. My parents knew her through some mutual friends, and asked if she would be willing to drive my sister and me to the new school for the next month. Frona agreed, and early every morning, my mother would drop us off at her house. There, we would wait in the front room for a half hour or so until it was time to go to school.
Frona had, if I remember correctly, three children. We hardly ever saw them, since they only had to come through the front room to leave the house. There was a doorway between where we sat and where the kids were getting ready for school. And what we heard and smelled through that doorway shocked and enticed us. What kind of family was this?
The kids would be watching cartoons while their mom made breakfast. We could hear the shows but not see them, which was challenging enough. Then we would smell all kinds of wonderful breakfast aromas. We had usually not eaten anything before leaving our house, especially since it was so early in the morning. My mother never cooked breakfast for us. That had been our grandmother's territory. Now we were leaving the house much too early to go to grandmother’s house, and so we didn't eat breakfast at all.
Through the sliver of open door, we would hear all these family sounds of kids getting dressed. "Where is your blue shirt?" "Come here, honey, let me zip that up for you."
My sister and I were shocked. We had never even imagined a family scene like this. There was warmth, caring and laughter. These people actually seemed to like each other! I think we were more surprised and intrigued than outright jealous.
Sitting there for so long every morning, my sister and I did manage to entertain ourselves. We'd pretend we were begging for pieces of toast, and end up cracking up so hard that we'd have to stifle our laughter.
AGE 7
At age seven, my favorite toy was a gigantic chemistry set. Since both of my parents were high school teachers, they were able to bring home chemicals and scientific instruments from the chemistry departments in their schools. I had a Bunsen burner, two professional quality microscopes, and shelf after shelf of chemicals. For hours on end, I would explore the fascinating unseen worlds hidden in common substances with my high-powered microscopes.
Sometimes I would follow experiments described in the high-school books, but most often I would just heat stuff up and mix it all together to see what happened. Some of my creations smelled really bad, others fizzed over on to the table. Most just changed color or did nothing. Fortunately none of them blew up the basement!
My sister and I became instant outcasts at our new school. I think the main reason for this was that we were quite unkempt. We were now able to walk to school, and nobody usually helped us to get dressed in the morning. Not surprisingly, we put together some strange color and texture combinations. This did not build a positive image for us in our affluent new school.
There were, for example, the orange tennis shoes. They had been on sale for two dollars each, and my thrifty mother snatched up ten pairs: five for my sister and five for me of pointy-toed, bright orange tennis shoes for us to wear with our pink dresses, green skirts, and purple blouses. My sister and I walked into our new school looking very strange indeed.
Suddenly, after six years of pleasant relationships with my peer group, I was an outcast. For the next five years, I would be teased, scorned, and treated to a front seat view of how human cruelty manifests even in young children.
At first, I didn't know how to respond to this new experience of being teased. I would answer back with some clever or sarcastic answer, but that didn't seem to work at all. The other kids wouldn't appreciate my humor. Clearly, there were no extra points given for cleverness in this new game of teasing the outcast. Anything I said made things worse, so I learned to stay silent.
Upon reflection, I can see some important personal lessons learned during this tumultuous time. First, I had to learn to control my anger. I learned to remain silent and usually peaceful, even in the face of negativity and injustice.
I also learned to feel content while just being alone with myself. Although I would form some valuable relationships and friendships later in life, they were not based on neediness. If destiny brought a friendship to me, I would experience it in the moment, but I didn't seek out relationships to fill a gap in my life. And when my karmic connection with someone began to wane, I would usually be able to move forward with little disruption.
Therefore, as with all life circumstances, whether outwardly favorable or unfavorable, this experience did bring valuable benefits along with the adversity.
Another major problem arose for me during this time. In my old school, we had been learning to print at the end of first grade. I'd already learned how to read and print before even starting elementary school, and so first grade had been easy street in terms of my ability to do the work, if not in terms of my willingness to do it.
Now I was attending a much better school system, and my second grade classmates already knew how to write! I hadn't even started to learn handwriting. Suddenly, I went from being a class genius to a class dunce, and an outcast to boot. Life really began to crumble at age seven.
AGE 8
By this time my parents actively hated each other. And my sister and I, or "the bastards," as we were sometimes called (as in "Get the bastards in the car,") were the reason they had to stay together and suffer. Their resentment was tangible.
One day I got into a bit of trouble at school for swearing. While standing in the lunch line, a particularly hyperactive kid jumped in front of me, pushing me back. Being the outcast often meant being at the end of the line for things. I was upset at being pushed back, and called this kid a "bitch." Who knew it was a bad word? It was an often-used thread in the argument tapestry at our house.
Our family no longer ate meals together. My mother had finally become tired of slaving over a hot stove cooking "Hamburger Helper" every night. She and my father discovered that they could afford to eat every meal in restaurants. From then on, my meals consisted of TV dinners, canned soups, toast, and/or ice cream. On most days, the closest I got to a wholesome meal was the none-too-savory school cafeteria lunches.
Around this time, my sister and I discovered the supernatural. Our mother was a violin player for the local philharmonic orchestra, and every other Friday we'd have to sit through a two-hour concert. If we moved around or talked, we'd get in trouble for disturbing the audience, so we came up with a little game. First, we would choose a nearby, unsuspecting candidate. Then, my sister would try to use her will power to make the person scratch their ear, and I would direct mine toward making their nose itch. Whichever area was scratched first decided the winner of this game.
We also began to use an ouija board to answer questions, and held seances, trying to evoke disembodied spirits. We read spooky books, and religiously watched our favorite supernatural shows, "The Twilight Zone" and "One Step Beyond." We played constant ESP games, and were absolutely convinced that we were able to access paranormal powers.
Our parents did not discourage these interests. In fact, they were teaching about the various categories of paranormal phenomena in their ever-popular high-school psychology classes. Our mother even seemed to think she had some special psychic abilities – or at least she wanted others to think so. Around this time, our mother started hanging out with "a group of witches." I never knew much about them, except that she liked to impress them with her friend, the Wizard.
Here’s how it worked. First, my mother would have one of her witch friends pull a card from a deck at random, let's say the six of diamonds. Then she would phone our house. I'd answer the phone, and she would ask "May I speak to the Wizard?"
This was my cue to play the game. I would begin to recite the four card suits, "Spades, clubs, diamonds. . ."
As soon as I said "diamonds," my mother would say, "Yes, I'll hold," and I would quickly begin to recite the card numbers.
When I reached "six," she would say, "Hello Mr. Wizard."
Then my mother would hand the phone to her friends, and I would speak in my deepest, most wizard-like voice, "Your card is the six of diamonds."
Her witch friends were amazed. All they heard was, "May I speak to the Wizard? Yes, I'll hold. Hello, Mr. Wizard." And there would be the Wizard with their randomly chosen card.
From this game, I learned that apparently paranormal events might, in fact, have an everyday explanation.
AGE 9
At nine, I began to work as a babysitter. Despite my young age, I looked like a teenager and was often trusted with more responsibility than other kids my age. I started by babysitting for the twin babies of my parents' friends.
The adults would usually stay out past midnight. There I would wait, bobbing in and out of consciousness for hours. I'd keep the television set on most of the time, trying to stay awake. Even though I was allowed to fall asleep, still I felt guilty when I did. After all, I was being paid by the hour to baby-sit.
Little did I know how these efforts were stretching my consciousness. The practice of trying to stay awake while sleep descends takes a lot of mental self-control. I would stay right on the edge between wakefulness and sleep for hours on end. It was uncomfortable, yet there was also a blissful transcendence in moving through various degrees of unconsciousness with just a sliver of awareness.
This was the year we took our first family vacation overseas. My sister and I were excited about the trip, but knew that being with our parents full-time was not going to be a barrel of fun. We were right!
Right after landing in France, I started feeling stomach flu symptoms. While walking through the Louvre, I was starting to get increasingly nauseous. At first, I didn't say anything, hoping the queasiness would go away. However, as we stood examining the Mona Lisa for what felt like way too long, I realized I was going to throw up. I told my father, and he helped me find a "water closet."
This French bathroom was unlike any I had ever seen before. Two very large, metal footprints stuck out from the floor, with a large drain-hole between them. I stood on one of the footprints and puked my guts out. When I returned to the gallery, my parents were arguing about what to do with me. They were upset that I was sick. How dare I try to ruin their vacation like this?
My parents believed that all illness is psychosomatic, created by the mind. This was a theory they had picked up while doing research for their psychology classes. My mother's class notes explain, "We sometimes condition behavior that is not wanted inadvertently. For example, a child is ill and the parents make a big fuss over him with positive reinforcements of gifts and attention. Illness should be checked and basically ignored. It seems cruel, but doesn't reinforce the illness."
Although this philosophy may have value on a theoretical level, it created a rather distorted response to disease in our family. If I got sick or even injured, it was thought to be intentional. When ill, I would be ignored, sometimes for days on end. I remember my mother once saying, "If she gets hungry enough, she'll decide to get better." I don't think they responded this way with the specific intention of inflicting cruelty on us. Nevertheless, this philosophy served as a convenient excuse for them to avoid acting as caring parents, even during our most needy times.
Here we were in beautiful Paris, and I was sick to my stomach. There was some discussion of whether I could be dropped off at the hotel, but that didn't seem acceptable. So we continued on to the Eiffel Tower.
In order to see the view from the top, it was necessary to walk up many flights of stairs. We began the trek, but soon I was lagging behind. I felt so sick that I had to use my hands to help pull me up each step. At first, my parents accused me of being overly dramatic, then they just walked on. My compassionate sister stayed behind to help me.
Eventually, we arrived on a level with an elevator. My parents were waiting there, still irritated with me. "Because of you, we have to take the elevator!" I felt bad, but was relieved not to have to crawl up any more steps. Fortunately, it ended up being only a 24-hour flu.
Our European trip continued through Austria, Germany, and Hungary. We were making the trek with a book my father had found: Europe on $5 a Day. There were few things my father loved more than saving money. His father had lost all his money in the Depression, and never recovered from the loss. My father was left with serious money issues because of his father's trauma. So here we were two generations later, staying in the crummiest places so we could experience Europe on $5 a day.
In Vienna, we spent more than two hours trying to find the cheapest place. We found it. The room was filled with flies. We had to keep calling the front desk to come up and kill them. The beds also had bugs, and we had to have all the linens changed. But there was my father, happily keeping track of how little we had spent, so he could go back home and impress all his friends. This was our "luxurious" trip to Europe!
Germany presented another problem for me. Most of the food in Germany looked like sausages, all wrapped up in intestines. I had recently watched a cooking show and discovered what that chewy wrapping on my hot dogs was really made of. From that day, I never touched one again. So in Germany, I lived for several days on a basic diet of bread and beer.
My parents weren't upset to see me drinking beer – they thought it was cute that I liked alcohol. Truthfully, I wasn't really as crazy about the flavor as I tried to appear. It was more a way to get positive attention. This trend had started when I was five. We used to visit my great-aunt Olga for Passover dinner almost every year. It was the only slightly religious thing our family ever did. I would get smashed on Manischevitz while all the adults laughed. "Look how cute, she likes the wine!" At the time I relished whatever positive attention I could get.
Germany was also significant for another reason. My father was absolutely obsessed with Hitler. He was teaching several history classes at the time, and included a very detailed study of Nazism and Hitler's missing testicle. Our four days in Germany were spent mostly at Holocaust museums and sites. We went to the Dachau concentration camp and saw the barracks, gas chamber, ovens, and shocking photos of the victims. It was all very sobering. Seeing this level of pain and suffering made me grateful to have the life I had, even with its difficult times.
After Germany and Austria, we went to Hungary, where we took a driving trip through the country with some distant relatives who lived there. At one point, the adults wanted to go off on their own, so they left my sister and me with our two Hungarian cousins at a youth communist camp for several days. We had to wear the official khaki shirts with red scarves. Every morning we would stand for a half-hour while all the kids chanted communist slogans. My sister and I spoke almost no Hungarian, and nobody there spoke any English at all. But there was a swimming pool and campfire dances at night, and we had a reasonably good time nonetheless.
AGE 10
School was getting worse. As my peers grew older, they became more merciless in tormenting us few unlucky souls, the school outcasts. In a way, it was like being famous, except the attention was negative. We had songs composed about us and our families. Sometimes we were tripped or pushed around physically. Our every move was scrutinized. When Valentine’s Day rolled around, you could be sure that our nicely decorated boxes would be empty of cards.
Now that the initial stress of being an outcast had worn off to some degree, I was starting to settle in to my new role. Even though this state of affairs looked troubling from the outside, really, it wasn't so bad. These circumstances also brought me a sense of freedom. I came to realize that it wasn't necessary for me to be like everyone else. I didn't have to conform my ways to make the other kids like me, because they wouldn't anyway. I could be eccentric; I could be aloof. I could be myself without putting on masks to please others. I could be alone with my thoughts. By this time, I didn't even want the other kids to like me. Most of them seemed obnoxious and immature. After being given a view of what ugliness lurked within these cute little kids, I didn’t really want to be friends with them. I was often intrigued by their foolishness. One girl who wore big glasses even started to call me "four-eyes." It seemed she didn't quite understand the term.
By this time, my parents had all but disappeared. It was 1970, and they had entered the hippie world of free love and pot parties – and you know that nobody could have wild parties like those high school teachers! We never knew exactly where our folks were, or when they would be coming home. My sister and I received generous allowances of $20 per week, which allowed us to eat regularly at fast-food restaurants. Far from lacking material possessions, I had my own room, a private phone line, and an excellent quadraphonic audio system.
One fateful day, our mother decided to try to cook a meal. It had been years since she had done such a thing – I don't know what got into her. She bought a fish and put it in the oven. My sister and I took one look at this fish with its head still on, and started laughing, making fun of it. "We're definitely not going to eat that!"
Our mother became very upset. Here she was trying to act normal and motherly, and we didn't even appreciate her efforts. She yelled, "You are going to eat it, or you can go to hell!"
My sister and I went upstairs for a meeting. We decided to run away from home, rather than eat that nasty-looking fish. We gathered our savings, and left a note at the top of the stairs: "WE WENT TO HELL."
Proud of our boldness, we slithered down the roof to our bikes, and took off. We had a lovely dinner at Burger King, and visited a couple of the neighborhood stores. Then it got dark. We hadn't really thought about what we were going to do at night. Where would we sleep? We tried to come up with an alternative, but finally had to surrender and return home, knowing we would be punished. The end result wasn't too bad. Our bike privileges were revoked for a month, but at least we didn't have to eat that disgusting fish!
You can't beat striped pants as a fashion statement.
AGE 11
At this point, my sister and I became filmmakers. We'd use a little super-8 camera to create all kinds of "masterpieces." The first was, "The Adventures of Super Squirrel," which featured all of our stuffed animals moving across the screen frame-by-frame, saving one another from peril.
Okay, here is proof that I have no ego: CLICK HERE to play The Adventures of Super Squirrel in streaming realplayer. It was edited only in the film camera, and the years have taken a toll on the picture quality. Alas, no film restoration was available for this little "masterpiece."
By this time, I had become the quintessential bratty sister, but my sister was physically stronger than I. She won every fight, though I never seemed to give up. We both had a substantial amount of sublimated frustrations, and were often aggressive with one another. Since our parents were hardly ever home, we'd have the whole house available as our fighting space. We would stand on opposite ends of the living room, with evenly divided piles of boots and shoes. Then we'd throw them at one another as hard as we could, one by one. Whoever was the least injured by the end was the winner. Or we'd run around the house with glasses of water, splashing them over each other's head.
One day, I stood behind the living room doorframe, poised with a big pillow
. I was waiting for my sister to walk through so I could slam the pillow down on her head. I stood there patiently for a long time. Finally she came through, and I smashed the pillow down with all my might. Oops! It was my mother. She was too shocked to get very mad.
Although she wasn't a model parent, our mother was quite an interesting character. The high-school kids lined up to take her fascinating psychology classes. She once hired an artist to create a huge scenic painting on our garage door of a deer walking through the woods — to make it easier for friends to find us. "We're the house with the deer on the garage."
Unfortunately, this added bit of artistry also drew some ire as artistry sometimes does, and made our house an easy target for our mother's inevitable disgruntled students. We spent many hours cleaning eggs and tomatoes that had been thrown against our windows, and the beautiful deer painting was eventually sprayed over with graffiti.
Our mother was clever and punny. Actually, her puns often got on our nerves. Once I fell off my bike and broke my big toe. It quickly became swollen, painful, and dark purple. I was barely able to make it home, hobbling with my bike. When I showed my mother what had happened, she quipped, "Well, I guess we'll have to call a tow (toe) truck!"
AGE 12
At the age of twelve, I entered junior high school, where things improved considerably. Blue jeans were now standard wear. It's hard to mismatch anything with jeans. There was a whole new group of kids at this school, and I found new friends and a niche for myself. School became a fun place, and I met my best friend, Larry.
Larry was special to me. He was an adorable boy who looked as though he could be a rock star. We hit it off right away. He used to laugh for hours as I told him all the horror stories of my home life. It was so healing to be able to laugh at these things with my new best friend.
From this point on, my reaction to difficult family circumstances was transformed from distress to glee. Whenever my parents were acting particularly insane, I would be chuckling to myself at how much Larry was going to laugh when I told him about this one. Without changing the external circumstances at all, my experience of family life was transformed. With just a shift of perspective, the pain became pleasure. The idea that my family's craziness was good fodder for laughter elevated my whole perception of it. I almost looked forward to the next shocking event, knowing how much Larry would be entertained. And I didn't usually have to wait very long!
Around this time, I started to take amphetamines. I took them for nearly two years. My mother had befriended a "diet doctor," who had access to pure speed, and I decided to join her in this new adventure. Though neither of us were more than a few pounds overweight, we would go every Tuesday afternoon for a shot of pure speed and pills for the week. Every week there would be different tablets and capsules in the packet. We were studying drugs in school at the time, and I learned some of their street names, such as "Christmas trees" and "pink ladies."
As a child speed freak, I obviously found myself needing much less sleep. Some nights, I would sleep for a single hour before going to school. My brain was buzzing all the time. One positive side effect of the speed was that it made me really, really smart. All of a sudden, I loved math. I loved algebra. I loved geometry. I loved crossword puzzles and logic problems. I'd stay up all night reading, thinking and going through, at times, two full crossword puzzle books in one night. After years of receiving C's and D's throughout elementary school, I was now placed in the most advanced math class. I wrote an essay for my seventh-grade English class that contrasted Freud's topological and structural theories. I was still interested in psychology, and continued to read all the latest books being used in my parents' classes. I liked the idea of tracing behaviors back to different scientific theories. It seemed to be as important as anything else I was learning at school.
My parents were still teaching psychology in their classes, and were living fairly wild swinging lives. Over the years, I would occasionally find out that one of my teachers or a coworker had been having an affair with my father, who had finally found a niche in the bar scene. In this photo, we're both up in the middle of the night during a plane flight, and my father invited me to come to the lounge area and asked me to pretend to the others there that I was his girlfriend, since I looked older than my twelve years. It was a little creepy, as you can see by the body language.
AGE 13
At thirteen, I got my first real job as a waitress in a local restaurant, "The Purple Pickle." According to law I had to be over eighteen to work there; however, I had a fake I.D., and looked old enough to pass.
Still on speed, I'd leave school at 3:30 p.m. and walk to the restaurant. I'd work from 4:00 p.m. until midnight, when one of my co-workers would drive me home. Then I would spend the rest of the night doing homework, reading, and solving logic problems or crossword puzzles. My speeding mother was always up all night as well, so we did manage to spend some time together during this phase. Occasionally, we even managed a little conversation.
I'd work at the restaurant Monday through Friday, and on weekends I would baby-sit. Most Saturdays, I would take care of three kids whose mother was away in a mental institution. The bizarre part of this situation is that the oldest girl I was babysitting for was half a year older than I. But the family didn't know that; they thought I was eighteen.
This was a fairly happy time. I was busy and making a lot of money. Plus I was hardly ever home. And when I was home, I was usually stoned. After my encounter with speed, I had discovered other drugs. First, I took THC and mescaline, and then marijuana.
I believe that addiction tendencies must be genetic, because that is the only explanation for why I did not become addicted to drugs. I was able to self- monitor when I was becoming dependent on them, and pull back my use as needed.
This year, our family went overseas again, taking a trip to Spain. While there, we took a "nice family drive" through the mountains. As usual, my parents were arguing. My father was dishing out one of his favorite retorts to my mother, "Be nice! If you can't be nice, be normal!"
As we drove higher and higher, my mother began to insult my father more and more vigorously. He was a nervous, insecure man who hated being insulted by her. Finally, he snapped, and started to scream, "This is it! I've had it! We should all die rather than be subject to your constant bitching! If you say another word, I'm going off the cliff!!!"
We were driving on a road barely big enough for two cars to squeak past each other slowly, and there was no guardrail. Our father sped up until we were careening around the curves, more than once touching the edge of the cliffs. My sister and I sat in the back seat, clinging to one another. We were crying and begging our mother to stop nagging him. Instead, she told him he was a "stupid ass."
He began to yell louder and louder. "This is it! We're all going to die! Anything to get away from you!!!"
My sister and I held each other, and prepared to die.
Somehow, we did survive and managed to make it back to the hotel. My sister and I had a room adjoining our parents'. We slipped into our usual technique for diffusing anxiety, and started to make fun of their ridiculous behavior. We took turns being my father and mother in the scenario, nagging and fighting with each other. We tried to do it quietly, but our folks ended up hearing us. We actually got in trouble for imitating their craziness!
My mother was once written up in the local newspaper in an article called, "The Coupon Queen." She had boxes upon boxes of coupons, organized by type of item and expiration date. She knew when each store had their double- or triple-coupon days, and would often manage to get bags of groceries, practically for free. For example, if an item costs $1.00 and you have a coupon worth 35¢, then a triple-coupon store would have to give you the product for free. One particularly generous check stand clerk even gave her some change along with a free bag of groceries.
If you opened a closet door in our house, you would not see a box of Kleenex. No, you would find two hundred boxes of Kleenex. Need a new tube of toothpaste? Help yourself from one of the toothpaste shelves. When saccharin was outlawed as an additive to soft drinks, my mother purchased more than 10,000 bottles (yes, 10,000), because she liked soda pop. Some of these products were given to friends in need or donated to charity. When there was an occasion for me to receive a gift, I would just head down to the toy shelf in the basement and choose one. It was like living in a store.
AGE 14
At age fourteen, I discovered my artistic talents, and started experimenting in different media of expression. One day I thought it would be fun to not just draw somene I knew, but to create an entire being just from my imagination. The drawing flowed so naturally that at the time, I wondered if the drawing was perhaps of someone I knew in another place and time, although I didn't really have any philosophical or theological theories to support this idea.
In the midst of my artistic awakening , I also experienced my first opening to the remote possibility of the existence of God. The memory of my initial church extravaganza at age two-and-a-half had been long buried beneath a mountain of subsequent experiences. I'd avoided learning anything about religion. I was a total atheist, as was the rest of my family. It's not even that I denied or disliked God; I simply never considered such a thing as a possibility. It was a non-issue. The only time I can remember the word "God" being spoken in our house was during a party when my father got drunk and ran around the house yelling, "I am God!" And even that carried a bitter memory, because I mumbled, "Yeah, spelled backwards" and was sent to my room.
Somewhere along the line I had heard the word "Jesus." I knew he had something to do with religion, but had made it to age fourteen without knowing the story of Jesus at all. I wasn't even sure what the Bible was, though I knew it was some kind of religious book.
The movie theater near our house had matinees for one dollar on Wednesday evenings. One week, I went to see "Jesus Christ Superstar: A Rock Opera." I almost didn't go because of the title – obviously, a movie about Jesus was bound to have something to do with religion. But it was the only movie playing that I hadn't already seen, so I decided to go.
This musical dramatization may not have been authentic in details; however, for someone who had never heard about what supposedly happened a couple thousand years ago, it did communicate the archetype of this event. The story touched me in a way that nothing ever had, and brought forth feelings I had never known. I walked into the theater in one world, and left in quite another.
The actors seemed to have really tapped into the essence and emotions of the historical figures they portrayed. Their passion was potent, and sparked a new shift inside me. I was inspired by Jesus' intimate relationship and personal dialogue with God. He even yelled at him during one song. Many times, I would have liked to have a God to yell at!
One of the most touching moments for me came during Jesus' second meeting with Pilate. He had been beaten and led all over the place by Roman soldiers, then dragged into the arena. There, Jesus stood before Pilate, a man with the political clout to kill him. All around were the very people who had worshipped Jesus fervently, now turned against him.
To powerful strains of rock music, Pilate had Jesus whipped fiercely, until he fell helplessly to the ground. Then, with the tenderness of a mother, Pilate lifted Jesus' head. He did not want to kill this man.
Pilate began to sing, "Where are you from, Jesus? What do you want, Jesus? Tell me. You've got to be careful, you could be dead soon, could well be. Why do you not speak when I hold your life in my hands? How can you stay quiet, I don't believe you understand!"
With eyes that seemed to look beyond his own pain into another world, Jesus sang with sweet defiance, "You have nothing in your hands. Any power you have comes to you from far beyond. Everything is fixed and you can't change it!" This was an extraordinary lesson for me. Jesus didn't buy into the illusion of the events that were unfolding around him. He didn't apologize or change his belief system to fit in with the ignorance being displayed before him. Rather, Jesus chose to take refuge in this God who was so tangible to him.
During difficult phases of my childhood, there had been no sense of any higher being to pray to, ask for blessings, or to have watch over me. It's not that this movie immediately transformed me into a believer, but it did open up a previously untapped spiritual passion deep inside my soul. Soon afterward, I painted my first oil painting collage with scenes from the movie to express all the feelings I was experiencing in empathy for the story of Jesus.
AGE 15
In high school now, I was part of a clique (a nonviolent version of a gang), hanging out in a neighborhood several miles away from mine, with a group of kids who had less money but were friendlier and less pretentious than those in my neighborhood. Most of my new friends were barely making it through school, but at least they were fun. Many had a certain street-smart intelligence that wouldn't necessarily be evident to those who might judge them from their external looks and behavior. We drank and took drugs regularly. We also became troublemakers, and would sometimes go into construction sites and wreak havoc. It's a good thing we were never caught, or I might be writing this from a jail cell instead of a cottage by the ocean!
In my school, there were two groups of kids, the freaks and the straights. The freaks were the wilder kids, while the straights were generally more intellectual and focused on school. I straddled the two worlds. I was definitely one of the freaks, and spent most of my time with them. On the other hand, even with my wild nature I was able to get good grades and chat intelligently with the straights. I think it was during this time that I realized it was not necessary for me to fit neatly into any mold. I learned to meet each person on his or her own level. I didn't have to be stuck in any one persona. I could kick back with the freaks one minute, and discuss philosophy with the intellectuals the next.
By this time I was spending less and less time at home. My family never ate meals together anymore, and I had subsisted on junk food for many years. My friends' parents seemed to feel bad about my home situation and often invited me to join them for meals. Nearly every evening this year I ate dinner at one of my friend's houses.
Larry's very loving and devoted mother was so upset by his stories about my family that she offered to adopt me. I wanted to take her up on her proposition more than she knew. But it seemed as though the attempt would just make things worse. My parents would never go for it. I had to wait it out.
During this year, I learned how to be a winner. One day, I was listening to the radio. Every now and then there would be a phone-in contest for various prizes. I never really paid much attention to these announcements, until one day when I heard they were about to give away some record albums I'd been wanting. I dialed the number and won. Free albums! I developed a new interest in this phone-contest game and decided to figure out the ropes.
Most of the stations scheduled their contests at the same time every hour. Some had so many phone lines that you would actually have to call before the contest was even announced to have a chance of winning. I spent hours practicing dialing each number really fast. It was like going to work, only better. I was winning free things nearly every day. Sometimes, I'd win two or three contests in a row.
From this venture I also learned about the tides of destiny and fortune. Some days I could feel that the energy around me was low. I knew I wouldn't win, though I'd still try. Other times, I knew even while the phone was ringing that I would be the correct caller.
Within two weeks, each of the stations had told me I could no longer win their contests, since I had already won so many times. I then put together a list of all my friends' and my parents' friends' names to use for winning, keeping track of which prizes needed to be picked up from where and in whose name. I was a phone-contest entrepreneur. Within a few months, I had won tickets and transportation to a Kiss concert in Chicago, many T-shirts, $150 cash, a one-year supply of spaghetti, and hundreds of record albums. I had so many albums that my parents went out and bought me a full-sized record display case from a local store that was going out of business.
Once, I won 25 albums with one call. First, you had to be the right caller. Then, you would have ten seconds to say as many albums as you could, title and artist. You would win as many albums as you could name in the ten seconds. I really practiced for this. First, I made a list of the shortest album titles that also contained the artist's name. That was easy because there were many live albums out at the time: Bowie Live, Kiss Live, Frampton Live, etc. Then I would call the number for "time," where a woman's voice would continually say, "At the tone, the time will be X hour, X minutes and X seconds. Conveniently, her declarations were exactly ten seconds apart. I practiced my list for hours, and then managed to make it through as the right caller. The seconds ticked away as I executed my well-rehearsed stack of words. The buzzer went off, and the radio DJ said, "Wow, that was great! You must have gotten at least eight to ten in there." Most people could only say four or five titles and artists in the ten seconds.
Still on the air, I said, "No, that was twenty-five titles and artists."
He said, "I'm sorry. There's no way that was twenty-five."
I suggested that he play the tape back at slow speed. He agreed, and came back on after the next song to announce that I really had won all twenty-five albums.
It was around this time that I started to play pinball. We had full-sized pinball and ski-ball machines right in our basement. Through this game, I once again learned how to sense and ride the tides of fate. There were times when I knew that every ball would shoot down the middle, clearly predestined for extinction. Then there were other times when I would slip into an extremely confident, relaxed, and alert space. With deep mental focus, I’d have a sense of stepping back out of myself. I was there, but more as an onlooker, allowing my subconscious abilities to come through without the usual level of mental judgment and interference. From this place, I would orchestrate the game strategy, while my hands served as proficient soldiers.
Around this time, my parents finally split up. My mother had been seeing my father's best friend for eight years. We all knew about the affair, and now that my sister and I were older, they wanted to get married. Thus began the divorce fiasco.
If life wasn't stressful enough before this, now my sister and I were used as pawns so my parents could hurt one another during the messy divorce proceedings. Each parent trashed the other, and sent mean-spirited messages back and forth through us. Our mother called our father "that bastard," and he called our mother and her fiancé "the infant and the child." It was all very complicated and messy. I couldn't wait to get away from these people.
AGE 16
