I buy my first record on top of the hill…I am given a dollar, so I can ‘shop’ for myself, and I find a stack of records (33rpm’s) at one of the neighbors little booths…even though we all live in this isolated nook, each sub-section has it’s own gossip and politics, and this couple is from the section that is just to your right if you were coming down the hill from the main road…(we are in the bottom left section—my future football coach also lived in this top right section, a fact that would come back to haunt me later)…I flip through the records, unfamiliar with most of the titles, until I come to one that immediately strikes a chord…the cover is a fairly simple one, 4 men with strong handsome faces in silhouette, “Meet the Beatles”…I have heard of this group name, but can not place its meaning specifically…I give the lady my dollar bill, and she hands me back three quarters…listening to this record becomes a religious experience for me, almost sexual, as I am totally overwhelmed by the collective sound of the greatest band ever blasting in mono thru a tin needle into a tiny speaker…I associate this sound forever with electricity, for it sends bolts thru my body and leaves me breathless…I can not stand still as I listen, so I must spin…I spin until I am ready to pass out, and then I spin some more…my favourite song that they play is “little child”, because I know they are singing for me…I am a wee 5 years old, and the year is an autumnal 1972…

I attend a grade school that is a long walk from home, about 15-20 minutes by foot…because this is the ‘safe’ suburbs, I generally walk alone with no adult supervision, but I do prefer to walk with one of my classmates and their parents, if only for conversations sake…the reason given to me for why I must walk alone to school is that my father used to walk 5 miles to school every day, so my small walk is nothing in comparison (a common theme with my dad throughout my life, even to this day)…I know the crossing guard well because she is my neighbor and mother to one of my friends…she sits at the most dangerous intersection, so I get to say hello to her twice, once coming, once going, and she sort of keeps an eye out me…I dread these walks, especially when it is cold, which in the Chicago area it generally is…one early morning on the endless road to school, I find a small rock that fits my hand perfectly, as if it was made just for me…it is exquisitely sculpted so that it curves up to meet the flesh of my thumb, sits squarely in the crook of my palm, and lays prone at the exact length of my fingers…this becomes my ‘lucky’ rock, and it makes me feel safer somehow to always have it in my pocket wherever I go (I still do this)…my experience at this new school is a similar issue, as I am so ahead of the other students that it is more of a social experience than a learning one…so I instead put my energy into creative things, like learning how to write as small as I can…the teachers often scold me because they can barely read my writing, which is legible but very tiny…they make me do exercises where I write in my normal small hand and then have to re-copy the same words on a larger scale (it is while doing this exercise that I begin to develop the larger, more flowery script that I still write with today)…

I am much taller than most of my class, and in some cases, literally twice as tall…I do not like standing out, or in this case, standing above, and begin to stoop down to hide my height…anything that makes me stand out drives me crazy, so intense is my desire to fit in…but any hopes of becoming one of the crowd are dashed when my classmates begin taunting and teasing me verbally about the large birthmark on my left hand…until this point I really hadn’t given it much thought, because although it had been pointed out to me previously by other kids, it had never once excluded me from ‘the club’…now at this new school, friends and strangers monstrously turned against me, calling me ‘weird’, ‘crippled’, and a ‘freak’…they would yell as I would walk thru the schoolyard at me, ‘Billy got burned, Billy got burned!’…one kid even said his parent had told him I had been burned by acid, and not to touch me…

My relationship with my step-mother is still fairly formal and distant, as I still view her as a stranger without a lot of power in my life…she calls the shots when my father isn’t around, but my sense is she doesn’t mess with me more out of fear of my father than any particular interest in me…she generally deals in discipline matters with me with a “wait until your father gets home” approach…life is not happy, but it is not unhappy…my real mother sort of fades into the background, taking her family with her…

The first real showdown between my step-mother and I occurs at this time, over a new pair of shoes…just back from shopping, she tells me that she bought me something, and to try them on…they are white tennis shoes, with a blue stripe running along the side…they fit ok, but uncomfortably so, and I try to tell her they feel weird on my feet, especially where they taper in at the end by the toes…she explains that the possible reason they might fit funny is because they are women’s tennis shoes, and that she got them because they were a cheap deal (on discount for 2 dollars)…I tell her that I don’t want to wear them because they don’t feel right, and besides, I don’t want to wear girls shoes…she eyes me cold and says that I will wear the shoes, she bought them ‘for me’, that I have no choice, and that these are now “my shoes”…besides, she says, no one will notice any way, so what’s the difference…

I am horrified the next day as she makes me wear these shoes to school…I feel as if the whole world is staring at my feet, as I carefully watch the eyes of each passerby to see if they notice them…it is a humiliating experience, made worse by the fact that it is one that I cannot escape from…the morning goes smoothly, without a single soul saying a word about my girl shoes, and I start to relax and forget about them…during recess however, one of my friends calls me out on the shoes, and soon is pointing to everyone to come have a look…I of course deny knowing what they are talking about, trying to tell any one who will listen that they are special shoes, imported from some place far away…

On the day just before my 6th birthday, my teacher informs me that she is very, very upset with me, because I have neglected to have a particular permission slip signed by one of my parents…without permission, I will not be allowed to go on a certain future field trip with the rest of the class…she tells me that if I do not get this slip signed “by tomorrow”, that I am going to be “in big trouble” (the teacher is kind of mean---a tall, boney blonde, so I believe her)…on birthday morning, I wake up very excited about the day ahead, because after school I am having a big party with many of my friends from the neighborhood…distracted by the moment, I forget to have this permission slip signed and hit the road…about 5 minutes away from home it hits me that I have forgotten, and I completely panic because I can’t go back…just as I was going out the door, my step-mother had informed me that she was leaving for the day, and that the door would be locked…my father of course is home sleeping, but as always, I am under strict orders to never wake him under any circumstances, or face severe punishment…I am trapped…I can’t go back home, and if fear I go to school the teacher without the permission slip she will be very angry with me and punish me as well…I don’t know what to do, and so in this fevered mind, I hatch a plan to skip school, figuring I will not have to face the teacher, or go home to my father…I walk down the normal road, pass my neighbor the crossing guard, wave a normal ‘hello’, go all the way down to the road just before the school, make a right, and then cut back towards home on a neighboring road…my destination is a small park where no one will probably be during the day…the only difficulty in getting there is that I must cross a neighboring intersection within eyesight of where the crossing guard usually stands, and she could possibly see me passing by…so I wait about a half hour after school has begun, and then walk stealthily on to the park…

I spend a quiet, serene, if not all together boring day sitting in the park by myself…I don’t have a watch, so I calculate time by watching the sun and gauging the days events by the cars passing by…one can only swing on a swing so much, or go down a slide so many times before you get totally bored (especially with no playmates)…most of the day is spent just sitting and watching nothing…the days major moments come when a mother arrives at the park with her infant and eyes me suspiciously because of my age and the fact that it is a school day…I smile at her and do my best to put her at ease, so she just ignores me after that…I can tell she is conflicted about whether she should tell anyone about me being there, but I figure that if she appears to me that she would call the police, I will just run and hide anyway…the other memorable moment comes when nature calls, and I must figure out a way to go to the bathroom in the small woods next to the park…I remember someone saying something about the Indians using corn cobs and leaves, so I do my best to get by…the moment finally arrives when I believe school will be getting out…I take the same neighboring road back, doing my best to avoid the gaze of the crossing guard…I walk back to school, circle round, and head home like always…as I pass the crossing guard, she looks at me funny, and I wonder if she had spotted me sneaking past her on the other road (I found out later that she had passed me in her car as I was walking)…I wave my normal ‘hello’, but all is not normal…I sweat it out all the way home, convincing myself that because it is my birthday she will not tell anyone and protect me…as soon as I get home, I head straight to my room, shaking because I am so scared I am going to be caught…I watch forlorn out my window as I see her come up the walk to ring the bell…after a few moments, I am called down by my step-mother, and confronted with the information with the crossing guard standing right there (what is even worse is she is set to come to the party)…I explain my logic, and fear, but it is of no use…birthday or not, I must go upstairs and wait for my father…I sit in my room for an endless time, as the kids arrive for the party…I can hear their muffled voices thru the floor, and I imagine them saying all sorts of things about me…the party starts without me, and it is an interminable hour before my father arrives and comes up to my room…