A Fresh Start
by rlfj
Book One: Junior High
Chapter 1: The Worst Day in my Life
Tuesday, November 5, 1968
“Carl, it’s time to wake up!”
I was having the damnedest dream. I could hear my mother calling for me to wake up, but she had been dead for six years. I dozed on and a few minutes later she called for me again. I rolled over and tried to burrow back into the covers, but the bed was oddly sized and didn’t seem right.
“CARLING PARKER BUCKMAN, IT’S TIME TO GET OUT OF BED!”
I groaned and sat up, my eyes still shut, and ran my hands over my face. That didn’t feel right, either.
“Man, she used all three names. You’re in trouble now!” said my brother.
But that wasn’t right. I hadn’t seen my brother since we had buried our mother six years ago. He hadn’t even come to Marilyn’s or Alison’s funerals. And as I ran my hands over my face, I realized I was clean shaven, no morning stubble. I continued moving my hands around my head and discovered hair up on top. I lost my hair a long, long time ago.
I opened my eyes and looked around. My kid brother, Hamilton, was sitting on the end of his bed smirking at me. “You better get up or Mom’s going to be angry!” But he wasn’t my brother. My brother is two years younger than me, so he is 65. This Hamilton was younger, a lot younger, pre-teen younger, a little kid. And what were we doing in our old bedroom, in our house in Lutherville? I haven’t lived there in fifty years. I moved out when I was seventeen. I looked around in confusion. It was our old bedroom, our first bedroom, upstairs across the hall from our parents, before we moved to the garage when it was remodeled.
“Carl, are you up yet!” sounded from down the hall.
“I’m up, I’m up!” I replied.
Hamilton kept smirking as he started getting dressed. He normally was the slow one. I got out of bed and opened my side of the closet — yeah, there was my robe hanging on the hook on the left side. I put my robe on and stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom. Suzie’s bedroom door was closed but I could hear her getting up. I slipped into the hall bathroom before anybody saw me.
Hamilton and I didn’t have any mirrors in our room. The bathroom mirror showed the face of me in my early teens, and I had a strange haunted look to my eyes. What was going on? The last thing I remembered was being in a Middle Eastern antique shop at the mall and thinking I was having a heart attack. Had I died? Was this heaven or hell? I remembered the store owner’s name was Selim al A-Din al-Kassim, and I was holding a lamp. Al A-Din’s lamp? Aladdin’s Lamp? I had wished to be a teen again. Was that possible?
“Mom, Carl’s hogging the bathroom!” yelled Suzie from the other side of the door.
I muttered under my breath. “Give me a minute!” I replied.
“Mom!” I ignored her and pissed and brushed my teeth. When I was growing up you took a shower before going to bed, not in the morning. I opened the door and she brushed past me, pushing at me from behind to move me along. I ignored this, too. When I was growing up, I thought Suzie was a major league pain in the ass, but it wasn’t until I had daughters of my own that I realized that all female offspring fall into that category. Male offspring, too, for that matter.
Shaking the cobwebs from my head, I went back to the bedroom I shared with my brother and dressed. Briefs and undershirt, jeans, flannel shirt, socks, and sneakers. I went down the stairs and found everyone already in the dining room. Well, my father had already left for work, so it was just Mom, Hamilton, and Suzie.
Hamilton and Suzie had already dug into their cereal. Mom looked over at me and smiled. “Morning, sleepyhead. How’s it feel to be a teenager?”
“Huh?”
“Happy birthday! You’re a teenager today, remember?”
“Uh, yeah, thirteen,” I said stupidly. Suzie ignored me and Hamilton just rolled his eyes. He was still ten and wouldn’t become eleven for another couple of months. So I was thirteen. That made today the fifth of November, 1968. Jesus H. Christ, it was the Sixties? What was going on?
My thoughts were interrupted by a nudge at my knees. I looked down and saw Daisy pushing against me. I didn’t think twice, but reached down and scratched her head. She gave a happy bark and lay down under the table at my feet. Maybe the Sixties wouldn’t be so bad. My favorite dog was alive and well!
Mom had to remind me to eat. I used my toes to rub Daisy’s stomach, which she enjoyed. Daisy was about two at the time, a curious result of an afternoon’s dalliance between a golden retriever and a beagle, the end result of which was the size and shape of a beagle, but with the coloring and beautiful coat of a golden retriever. She was one of the best dogs I’ve ever owned, with a happy disposition, little barking, and never biting. She didn’t need a leash when we went outside and never left the property without one of us with her. The only flaw anybody could figure out with her was that she wouldn’t chase the rabbits away from Mom’s garden. Daisy could care less. Dad used to say they could come up and play pinochle on her snout and she wouldn’t do anything. This bothered my mother, since the rabbits loved to eat her petunias. The rest of us thought this was hilarious.
It’s funny, though, how a dog picks its master. Daisy was the family pet, but she had immediately picked me as the master. After I went to college, her new boss became Suzie, completely skipping past Hamilton. She would live another 12 or 13 years, dying of natural causes after Suzie went off to college. She was a good dog and lived a good long life.
I had finished my cereal and Mom had to remind me to get up. “Carl, what is with you this morning? You’re going to be late for school!”
Oh, shit! School! At thirteen I would have been attending Towsontown Junior High, off York Road. I was in the eighth grade and took the school bus. Hamilton and Suzie walked up the hill about a third of a mile to Hampton Elementary. He was in the sixth grade and she was in second grade. Supposedly he watched out for her, but the reality was that he could care less and she simply followed him there and back. I always suspected that if a van pulled up alongside them and masked men jumped out and abducted Suzie, Hamilton not only wouldn’t do anything, he wouldn’t tell anybody until somebody asked him what happened to her.
I took my dishes to the kitchen and went to the living room closet and pulled out my pea jacket. I was headed out the door when Mom stopped me. “Your books?” She was pointing at my knapsack of books and I grabbed it. Daisy was waiting at the door and followed me out. Mom was muttering in the background, “If his head wasn’t screwed on, he’d leave that behind, too.”
The bus stop was just on the other side of the road. We lived on the corner of Ridgefield Road and Felton Circle. I had plenty of time to get to the bus stop. Daisy and I crossed the road and Daisy sat down at my feet. Katie Lowenthal came up to us and bent down, holding her hand out to Daisy. “Hello, Daisy!” Daisy woofed and raised her paw, shaking hands, which caused Katie to giggle. Most of the other kids greeted Daisy this way, too. Daisy didn’t know many tricks, but she liked this one and she was a good spirited dog. Everybody knew and liked Daisy.
I glanced up the street to see a big yellow school bus heading our way slowly. “Okay, Daisy, time to go home.” I pointed at our house and she took off, to bark at the front door. Mom let her back in with a wave to me. A few minutes later the bus lumbered up and I climbed on board.
There was a seriously restricted seating arrangement on the school bus. Seventh graders sat near the front, where they were near the driver and the big kids couldn’t pick on them. The big kids, mainly the ninth graders, with a smattering of large and ‘cool’ eighth graders sat in the rear, where they lorded over the lesser beings in front of them. The eight graders were stuck in the middle to fend for themselves. I usually sat inboard next to Katie Lowenthal and across from Ray Shorn and Betty Lewis. I looked around, remembering classmates from days long gone and trying to figure out where my classes were. Or had been. This was too fucking weird.