One good thing about my 6th grade year was I got my next job
as a newspaper boy.
After school everyday I’d wait for the bundles of papers to be delivered,
then after putting them together I’d load 50-60 papers in a large canvas bag I’d
wear over my shoulder and ride my bike 2 blocks over to begin delivering my
papers to people’s mailboxes, porches, and screen doors. Then I’d return home,
collect the remaining 80-90 papers and continue on to my second paper route.
The whole thing took maybe 2 hours, and it was a great learning experience.
Sundays I had to wake up at 4:00am to combine the much larger Sunday
paper (which also hade more customers) so they all had their Sunday paper
delivered to them by about 6:30-7:00am. These days, my dad would usually help
me by (first getting up that early) and driving me on my route. He’d do one
side of the street while I did the other. He also helped by driving me during
the winter months when riding my bike was impossible. Often times we’d finish
our Sunday morning routines by having breakfast at a local café when all our
papers were thrown.
Having a paper route taught me a lot of responsibility at an early age.
It was my job to see to it that people got their papers where they wanted them,
on time, every single day. It was also my responsibility to “go collecting” the
money for payment of the papers each week. I myself was billed for the papers,
so I had to “collect” from my customers in order to pay my bill. What was left
over was my wages (and tips) but I also had to keep good records of who paid
and didn’t pay. I don’t know if they still do it that way, but I think a paper
route is a great job for a kid. I’m very grateful for what all it taught me and
for the time I got to spend with my dad.
Something else which happened early in my 6th grade year was
that our family adopted a 6-month-old inter-racial child. I remember having
absolutely no problem at all (at the time) with my mom’s choice to do this. I
remember even being a little excited at the thought of having an addition to
the family. Now, thirty years later (without meaning this personally toward my
brother) I have to say I really question my mom’s choice in doing this, but
since that issue could be an entire post itself, I’ll leave that thread to a
minimum for now.
My family had recently joined and was baptized into the Mormon Church.
Also at this time I was involved in Boy Scouts through the church. I remember
going on a week-long Boy Scout camping trip to Nauvoo, IL. I enjoyed those
activities as well as the opportunity to visit many important historic Mormon
sites. Unfortunately I didn’t stay active in Scouts to finish my Eagle. Our
attendance in church usually depended upon my mom to be home, which for as far
back as I can remember was never very often.
Entering my sixth grade school year meant going to a new, bigger school
with other new kids from another Glendale elementary school, which at that age
was scary. That year was ok. I spent most of my time after school riding my
bike with friends exploring the neighborhood, throwing my paper route,
collecting and trading baseball cards or hanging out at the mall playing the
new sensation: video arcade games!
Looking back, the innocence of those days
was so great! I was part of a group of kids from our block who would gather for
serious events such as a game of “pickle”: baseball played with a tennis ball
to help avoid any broken windows (over the roof of the house across the street
was a home-run) and the yearly crab-apple fight. What we’d do for that was put
buckets over our heads to use as helmets (unless we could find a football
helmet), we’d use trash can lids for shields, gather crab apples from a
neighbor’s tree, and throw them at each other until: someone got hurt, we grew
tired, a grown-up saw what we were doing and made us stop or we finally lost
interest because none of the above had happened yet.
My sixth grade school year was ok. Some new classes I enjoyed but many
more I didn’t. And of course there were the new teachers to get to know. With
them came the childhood school rumors about one teacher having once been a
Playboy Bunny, one of them being gay, one having bad breath and one ancient
math teacher whose hands were so cold, was so mean and wrinkled, so close to
death’s door she was looking to take some of us kids with her to the grave by
touching us!
I did enjoy art class, cooking class, gym class and woodshop. Obviously
I preferred “doing stuff” over keeping my nose in a book at my desk. It wasn’t
that I had any trouble reading, I just found it boring. I regret that now
because since coming to prison I’ve become an avid reader and realize how well
that desire would have served me in school. I was fortunate to later marry a
girl who loved to read, and I’m grateful for that same desire having been
instilled into our daughter. I believe the love of reading to be a key to
success in life.
I did have some fights in sixth grade, but nothing like what was to
come in 7th and 8th grade. When I speak of fighting, it
was limited to boxing and wrestling. Thank God our school was not plagued with
the inner-city “urban” influence of guns, knives or the threat of being
retaliated on by a group of others 10-on-1 because you whipped one of their friends.
I really feel for all the many millions of kids whose voices are not being
heard, whose plight is not being taken seriously enough: while they are trapped
into suffering through that bullshit in so many schools these days.
My attention during these years now and to come was focused on life
outside of school, rather than in school. Most of my friends outside of school
were older than me and when summer vacation finally came around led me to stay
away from home more and more and out at night later and later. Usually I got
away from it because my mom was never home to order me to be grounded. My dad,
as I’ve said, was of the old-school philosophy of raising boys which dictates
to pretty much let me raise myself until my antics got him in trouble with my
mom. Then I got “the stick” when I got home. He preferred to use a wooden stick
to hit me with, rather than hurting his hand. He’d get plenty of opportunity to
use the sonofabitch the next two years. For some reason I got into many more
fights and much more trouble in seventh grade which led me to be sent home from
school more and more. However there were some very fond memories from this
year.
For example, I became close friends to a girl who would later agree to
be my first girlfriend. That was quite an event in a young man’s life and we
would remain dating for over two years. She and I were very close and spent a
lot of time together at school, on the phone, and swimming at her house during
the summer months. She turned me on to ‘80s music which I still love to this
day. MTV was in it’s hey-day at the time, so much of our talk was about music
and music videos. She was a huge Duran Duran fan, so I became an equal Duran
Duran-crazed fan.
To put their popularity into perspective, they were the ‘80s version of
the Beatles from the ‘60s. My other favorite
music performers from those days were: The Thompson Twins, The Police, U2,
Culture Club, Howard Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Prince, Simple Minds, The Outfield,
Bryan Adams as well as many one-hit-wonders. Due to the influence of the times
especially my following Duran Duran it was during my 7th grade year that
I pierced my (left) ear and bleached blond streaks in my hair. (Unfortunately
there is still photographic evidence available!) This caused some trouble for
me in school, some from the students but more from the administration. Our
middle school had to create new rules to combat my antics, such as: no “loose”
earrings (they didn’t want boys to wear them at all, but resorted to
restricting them to studs) and also outlawing any coloring of hair.
Looking back, I can hardly imagine any type of explanation for my
behavior. All the negative attention this brought me is quite the opposite of
who I am now.
