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Once long ago when I was too young and naive to know very much, my lonely mother met a man at a bible study; A seemingly innocent place, full of good but empty folks looking for answers in a very old book. Perhaps with a God to lead them, maybe personal redemption, to get some real meaning in their existences. Or perhaps even real love, which might be the same thing as all of the above in some cases.
She was there often, looking for any and all of those things. I’m not sure today if she was purposefully evil, devoid of goodness, or merely just monstrously selfish. She certainly had some good moments, but few and far between sadly.
Pretty much her whole life was about her, and what she wanted and liked, no matter the family members that were often hurt or offended by her ways. Her parents, her sisters, and I her young son usually bore the brunt of her selfishness, and she never cared about it one iota.
When I got punished, it was harsh, and often overkill, even for honest mistakes or accidents. For example, as a kid, for some strange reason, I developed a keen interest in juggling. I found it fascinating, the coordination and timing needed to perform an almost magical moving show in the air. To me, it was an amazing ability, and wonderful, since I was one of the most clumsy beings in America, at least at this point.
I had never ridden a bicycle, not once. I’d never tried skateboards, couldn’t roller-skate, and dropped almost everything in existence. I don't think it’s even possible for boys to be clumsier than I was then. If it was fragile, don’t put it in my hands. If it required balance, I would fall, it’s as simple as that. So for me, jugglers represented the ultimate in elegance, balance, and skill, exactly the opposite of me.
I was beyond interested, I was enthralled. I determined if nothing else, I would teach myself this skill, whatever the cost, and consequences are damned!
I would watch them carefully on our old black and white tv, and sometimes in downtown Buffalo, I would see them perform in person. I was always amazed, but I was learning as well. The motions, the movements, rhythms, and coordination. I was mesmerized but observing. One time, I asked one in person how I would go about starting. What were the first steps? He informed me this could be learned, with the appropriate dedication of course, and baby steps, as with many talents in life.
He mentioned starting with one ball, then two, as time went on. Start with balls, learn the objects, their feel, the timing of their flight, and the arcs of their descent, and go from there. So I went home, inspired, and sadly failed in a major way for my first attempt.
I searched our whole house for tennis balls, golf balls, or something akin to them to practice with. Hell, even balls of yarn would have sufficed at the time. Alas, we had nothing even close to this.
I didn’t play with balls of any type usually, and my mother had nothing appropriate either. I gave up and decided I couldn’t do this with salt shakers and such. I remember opening the fridge and looking for a snack, I was kinda peckish.
Then I saw the eggs on a shelf. They weren’t perfectly round of course, but they were almost there, lightweight and small. So a very bad idea in the history of bad ideas entered my young but eager mind.
Why not eggs? They seemed fairly close to what I was looking for. Small, manageable, cheap, and seemingly abundant.
What’s the worst that could happen right? My bedroom had a rug, which made it undoable, just in case, but the kitchen floor was linoleum, cheap, smooth, and very moppable. Seemed like a great idea at the time. My mother wasn’t home right then, and probably wouldn’t be for a while, so what better time than now to practice a future useful skill hmm?
So at first, I got out one small egg, and shuffling it back and forth in the air from hand to hand was fairly successful. I had the arc right, slow and steady, right to left, and I had the timing down. Then after 10 minutes of this, I decided to upgrade, and another egg was added to the mix. Right to left left to right, and overlapping arcs were the key, kinda like creating a Mcdonald's M, in the air. No problemo right? I kept doing it, getting the timing correct for now, back and forth, with my fragile objects. Seemed easy enough, at first.
The eggs flew in front of my eyes, steady, not too fast, and simple. So, I decided I would try a third, confident in my ability to handle two, maybe I could somehow do three carefully and slowly. I was eager to try, and sure I could somehow manage it. It was my final and saddest mistake.
Turns out I knew the arcs of two objects, but adding a third was an altogether different animal. I started throwing the first two eggs, and as soon as I added a third one, I lost all knowledge of what to actually do with it, and lost control, one after the other. I saved one single egg, but the other two splattered on the yellow linoleum floor, to messy effect. I placed the saved egg back in the fridge and looked at the mess that was on the floor. I knew my mother might be home any minute, so I collected every sad shard of eggshell.
We didn’t have paper towels in the house, but I noticed the linoleum was very shiny under the liquid of the egg. So I reasoned, why not spread the glory?
I mopped the two eggs over the whole kitchen floor, it looked very shiny and magnificent. The floor reflected the light in a way it had never done before. No water, just eggs, spread thinly and beautifully. A true thing of beauty. Of course, I mopped carefully since I didn’t want to blemish my work with something so crude as a footprint, that would have been pointless. I wanted the kitchen floor to shine, and it did. It shined like never before. Until my mother finally came up the stairs. We were living in an apartment on Sherwood street at the time, on the west side, as per normal. She came up the stairs, opened the front door, on the carpeted living room, put down her wheeled shopping cart, and the first thing she noticed was the shine of the kitchen floor of course.
I heard her sigh of pleasure, and her compliment as she said aloud “Oh Johnny, you mopped the floor, it looks beautiful”. That’s the first statement I heard. Then I watched her take one step unto the shiny floor, then her massive leg slid all the way forward, and she hit the ground like a massive earthquake, As long as I’ve known my mother she was never a small or petite woman, she was pretty much massive, so when she fell, the entire house shook in protest. One would think that a moon hit the very Earth, and the End was here!
She fell hard, the house shook, and all Hell broke loose in my world. I heard my name screamed, “JOHNNY!” louder than I ever heard it before. She struggled, got halfway up, and fell again. The floor was slipperier than any ice rink ever designed, slicker than oil, but a shining example of how nice a floor can look. She ended up crawling out of the kitchen to the relative stability of the living room rug and finally struggled to her feet, huffing, puffing, and saying my name the whole time. I knew I was doomed, fully. There would be a full painful payment due for this, I had no illusions about this.
It was an honest mistake, and I tried to correct it in my own fashion, but a futile gesture at best. It mattered not, the damage was done, and I would pay in spades, as I always did.
I confessed to what had happened, and she listened in motion only. As with many things, she never really heard me, because she never wanted to. At her heart, she was a selfish petty being, and only she and her own comfort mattered. I was merely a burden, and not important, as always. First, after yelling about it, she spread water and soap on the floor, cleaned up my well-intentioned mess, then grabbed an extension cord, and beat me into total submission. I cried for mercy, which never came. Death would have been less painful than what I went through, and hopefully a lot quicker. She beat me badly, but she also seemed to enjoy it.
Looking back, I believe it was part of her nature, whenever she inflicted pain on other beings, whether physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental, she seemed to relish it, like it was something she needed, to give herself some kind of meaning perhaps.
To emphasize her own very being, she lived, she existed, if only through the testament of others, mainly through the suffering she inflicted. As I can and will attest, to this very day. I paid that time, and at many other times as well. Either through extension cords, pieces of wood, knives, hard slaps, or even a baseball bat on an occasion or two, even an attempted murder once. She suffered in her life from poverty and bad choices, but she didn’t suffer alone, her only son joined her on this journey for a long time. I existed, but not happily, never happily.
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