A Swift Romance

My hairline began to recede when I was seven-months old. My head was the size it is today by my second birthday and by my fourth I had been diagnosed as an anemic by our family doctor, who ordered I be fed a spoonful of liquid iron each day. So, when I walked into my first day of preschool I did so having the proportions and appearance of a real-life Charlie Brown.

I would often break the ice with would-be friends by taking off my shirt to demonstrate how near I could come to drawing my belly to my backbone and delighted my older brother and his friends by turning out my shoulder blades, which looked like wings on my picayune thorax and made some wonder if I might one day buzz away on a strong wind.

Easy Creek, Missouri was still being built. Our house was only about as old as I was and distant hammering could always be heard a couple of roads over in one direction or the other.

There were a couple of banks, a new Pizza Hut, a Ramey’s Grocery Store and a Wal-Mart. This was well before Wal-Mart took the place of shopping malls. They didn’t sell groceries or offer haircuts, eye exams and manicures. They carried enough tools to hang a picture, had a guy who changed oil, had a cooler by the registers filled with half gallons of milk, and sold Christmas trees at Christmastime. If you were hungry you could go to the Radio Grill and wash down your BLT with a slushy and there was a chance you’d catch Sam making an appearance in his $7 shoes.

As soon as I had complained enough to be set free from the clothing department, usually after modeling a few combinations of “cute” shirts and “cute” jeans for Mom, I was in the dressing room and back into my own clothes. I left her there to go from rack to rack, examining each article of clothing being sold because it’s what she enjoyed doing, and made my way to Toys, via Electronics where I’d ask sheepishly if Mario Brothers 2 was out.

The Wal-Mart Toy Department was as much a part of my home as my brother’s bedroom — not quite but almost. I would pass the pink and pastels of the aisles carrying the absurd toys girls played with to be immersed in the dark greens, bright reds and blacks of the real toys.

This was the Golden Age of toys — the era of the action figure! My dad had spent his youth playing with marbles and talking to rocks. The doughy generation after mine spent their youth with the light from various screens dancing over their pallid features, making imagination unnecessary. I was in-between the two, during a time when kids had both an imagination and the tools to let it soar.

I would sometimes add a dash of crossover spice to my collection by choosing a He-Man figure but had little interest in G.I. Joe. Most often though, they would all be passed by as I darted toward the Turtles.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were named after four Renaissance masters by their Sensei Splinter, who taught them the ancient ways of the ninja. At first you could buy only the original figures, but soon there was a skateboard-riding Michelangelo and SCUBA-diving Raphael who would squirt water out of his mouth when you squeezed the rubber guitar on his back.

I amassed a considerable collection of figures along with complementary toys, like the Turtle Van and Technodrome. I had carrying cases specifically made for the Turtles that could be lugged around like suitcases for the times I spent the night at Grandma’s. I had three, with every compartment filled.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I could be found in the middle of the backyard playing with my toys because that’s when Mom would send me out to sit in the sun after dipping my head in lemon juice. She heard someplace that this would preserve the yellowness of my hair, and perhaps even enhance it!

Mom always wanted daughters, and responded to her misfortune of having sons by raising us as girls. I was seventeen before I stopped dabbing my penis with toilet paper after pissing and twenty-three when it occurred to me that I might be able to stand up to do the job. I learned quickly on the playground that other boys weren’t too interested in my warnings that the dry skin on their elbows was only going to get worse without their attention, so I stopped telling them.

In those early days though, Mom’s focus was mostly on our hair. Born with blond hair, I was the most celebrated belle at the ball. Luckily this was the age of the mullet, so I could blame a misunderstanding of fashion trends when asked why my shiny, conditioned curls spilled well over my shoulders.

Even with the drag of my buoyant curls, I was the fastest runner in both preschool and kindergarten. Whether it was a short sprint or a race of endurance across the entire length of the playground, my thirty-pound frame could fly. I would slow in my last few steps and lean my shoulder into the chain linked fence that was the finish line, turning to see second place five or six strides behind me.

When a train would pass by the playground, I was the only one who had a hope of keeping up. I’d run along the fence long after all others had surrendered, standing to watch with admiration. With my tortured neck muscles straining to steady my wobbling bobble head and the train conductor shouting unheard curses as he watched me, frantically throwing more wood on the fire to push his engine to its limits, I’d lean my shoulder into the fence he hadn’t yet passed, smiling as he shook his fist going by.

Being a good runner did not garner the attention from girls that I had hoped. Back then, that ability rested only with the oddly tall, as it does today in adulthood, and nobody was taller than Jake the Snake. The nickname was not a criticism of his character. It had more to do with the rhyme than anything else, along with a nod of respect to the professional wrestler.

Jake the Snake had dark hair and long, always tanned arms. He walked with easy strides, comfortable in his confidence as lesser boys wore masks of false bravado to hide their insecurities. As I was chasing trains on the playground, Jake the Snake was gently pushing our teacher on the swing while sipping from his juice box. From time to time he’d say a few words and she’d giggle bashfully, brushing her hair behind her ears.

I held no bitterness toward Jake the Snake. There was nothing more to be done about his charm than there is any other natural phenomenon. He was Jake the Snake as the aurora borealis was the aurora borealis. Jealousy toward either seems a little outlandish. You just hope you get to have your picture taken with them someday.

*

It just came to me. Inspiration from some mysterious and invisible muse delivered the line to me the moment Sabrina Swift won the crabwalk race in P.E. class.

When I knew Sabrina was close enough to overhear, I said, “Wow, Sabrina’s swift!”

Mrs. Crabapple’s soul, after decades of teaching the alphabet and leading children through the nuances of counting to 100, returned to her body and she smiled. “Hey, that was clever, Otis.”

I nodded to tell her I knew already.

Impressing the teacher had little to do with it though. If I knew anything, I knew that nothing could win a lady’s heart faster than turning her name into a pun. And so it began.

In those early days, romance was a simple thing. So simple a thing that you needn’t bother even letting the other person know about it.

Sabrina was my first girlfriend, though I can’t recall if we ever spoke to each other directly. Not in English anyway. From this early age it became apparent that I was bilingual. I was fluent in both English and the language of love.

In Mrs. Crabapple’s class I would stare at Sabrina until she noticed. Then I would convulse with surprise and quickly return to my coloring book.

I was a golden-haired Romeo.

Our relationship was not only a secret kept from Sabrina, but from my parents as well. My mother could disperse news to the masses more quickly and efficiently than could the Associated Press. As for my father, one of the only joys in his life after a 12-hour shift making Zenith televisions was teasing my brother about his crush on Alyssa Milano from Who’s the Boss. Letting either of them know spelled disaster!

Valentine’s Day was approaching and I had already made a shoebox into a mailbox using construction paper and stickers. The rest of the class was instructed to do the same. The mailboxes would be taped on to the front of our desks so that kids could drop their Valentine’s Day cards inside.

The night before the lover’s holiday, I snuck into the kitchen and found the slender box of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cards in a Wal-Mart sack. I almost blew the whole operation by dropping a new package of light bulbs on the floor, but I reacted quickly and captured them between my face and the drawer where mom kept the silverware. I pushed the bulbs back into the sack and stuffed the box of cards up my shirt and tucked in my shirttail so they wouldn’t fall out.

Looking calm and cool, I walked past the living room where mom watched her recorded soap operas and down the hall to my bedroom. Once there, I closed the door and ripped open the box.

The cards were printed on thin poster board with nine to a sheet. I read over each with my heart thumping, glancing frequently at the doorknob hoping not to be discovered. Mrs. Crabapple had insisted that every boy would give every girl a Valentine, and every girl would give one to every boy.

The other girls could open cards on which Michelangelo said “Cowabunga!” while holding a heart-shaped man-hole cover, but I needed to carefully select a special one for Sabrina.

I found it! Donatello, the most thoughtful and sincere of the four brothers, and so the best suited to convey my feelings, was doing a cartwheel over a heart that read, “I’m head over heels for you!”

“Honey,” Mom’s voice called down the hall. “My show’s over. Let’s go to the kitchen and make your cards.”

My heart raced as I tried to neatly tear along the perforated lines. As I heard the television go off I finally freed the card I wanted and stuffed it into one of the tiny envelopes. I wrote Sabrina’s name on the front and jammed it into my pants pocket just as my bedroom door opened.

“You already opened them?” Mom’s shoulders sank.

“I wanted to look at the pictures.”

“Well, don’t mess them up. Put it all back in the box. Where’s the list of names your teacher sent home?”

“I don’t want to hand out Valentine cards,” I said. “It’s stupid.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun.”

As we all rushed into the school the next day I quickly turned into the empty cafeteria to throw away the other cards I had watched mom make at the kitchen table. Mrs. Cox, the school’s best disciplinarian, took hold of my arm a second later and led me back to the hallway.

“You’re not allowed in here. Go to your classroom.”

I put my hand in my pocket to be sure Sabrina’s card was safe and that the corners weren’t bent as I rejoined the river of kids in the hallway.

At snack time we lined up, single file, behind our line leader. Although I could not hold eye contact for more than three-quarters of a second, I somehow summoned the courage to get Sabrina’s attention and point in front of me.

I was alarmed to hear a chorus of, “Sabrina butted in line!” rising up behind me. If the bastards at the back of the line had their way my romantic gesture would be transmuted into making Sabrina angry that I got her in trouble. Serendipity was on my side that day though as Mrs. Crabapple shushed everyone and Sabrina got her chocolate milk a few seconds before she might have if not for me!

After snack time we all got up to deliver our cards. I delivered my single card and rushed, terror-stricken, back to my desk with my stomach aching.

I had only one more thing to do to let Sabrina know how I felt about her and give her the perfect Valentine’s Day. I needed to chase her at recess and push her down.

Standing outside during our first of three daily recesses, I ignored the chant of, “Faster, faster, we need another master,” coming from the kids riding the merry-go-round. I would not be answering their pleas for help that day.

Instead, I watched Sabrina as the sun shined on her dark hair. I charged toward her and her friends and they all abandoned their swings to scatter. I caught up to my darling and grabbed the strap of her overalls, slinging her to the ground. I immediately turned and ran away, content knowing that she understood how much I cared for her.

A moment later I saw Mrs. Cox marching toward me. I froze in my tracks. I looked over at Sabrina to see that Mrs. Crabapple was helping her up and pulling a crunchy leaf from her hair.

I was lectured and a note was sent home because the button on Sabrina’s overalls had popped off.

Our relationship soured after that. I went home angry and buried the note behind the rose bush Mom planted by the front door. I suppose the paper the note was written upon has decomposed by now and has become part of the soil. Mrs. Crabapple must have forgotten she sent it home with instructions to return it with Mom or Dad’s signature because she never mentioned it again.

They had all misunderstood what I was trying to tell Sabrina.