Then it was in this 1981 through 1982 era that I had my first trauma induced memory. Melanie and I were out playing in the playground at the apartments that Cindy and Rich had moved into in Sacramento, California. They were right next to Sacramento State College Campus, and I believe that was because Rich was finishing up some sort of degree or what not, I was like two or three I don’t have all the details. Rich was pushing us on the swings. I was on a swing setup to be like a horse, so unlike your traditional leather strap connected by chains, this was one of those awkward looking devices that swung on a pivot point and was connected by four metal bars to the base. Well, he had me going nice and high as kids like and then boom! My face planted right into one of those metal bars. And I can still remember seeing light colored sky, then darkness and white streaks. It hurt.
But the pain-train wasn’t going to stop there by rubbing a little dirt on it. Somehow it managed to hit me hard enough to cause some sort of damage to my front teeth and I had to get taken to the dentist and have them pulled. Emergency style. If I thought face planting a metal bar hurt, try being held down by two grown men as the dentist yanks your front teeth out. Yeah, I can remember that afternoon. Losing those two baby teeth early along with being a thumb sucker when I was little probably led to my teeth not coming back in as straight as they could have in the front, it’s not that bad, but I do have a little gap in the big guys and my bottom four front teeth still seem to bend along an impact line.
SECTION 8 : School Time Hobbies and Sports
After Karl’s arrest Jake would soon move out of the house for a less standard living situation. And the tail end of the 1995 school year would sputter out for now. Standing now at the precipice of school it’s time to finally go back to a time when school seemed like an insurmountable road ahead, and the adventures of a young boy in the 1980s starting his journey down the path of public schooling.
The year will be 1983. I had the privilege of growing up in an education heavy upper middle class suburban area of the United States. To say there were options on how to approach public schooling might undersell what was going on. My mother at the time was a self-employed music teacher in the city and was planning on returning to college herself. She also had some background with the local school district with her first husband being a teacher in town for decades. So, my schooling really started younger than even kindergarten in 1983.
My mother was heavily involved in getting me into nursery schools in town, it helped her work out of the house without a munchkin always there and got me prepared for public schools. I spent a least two years in different pre-schools becoming socialized. Of course, all I really remember was one kid that misbehaved all the time and losing my Star Wars figures on the slides.
School didn’t start with kindergarten for me. My mother was a solemn believer in making me do stuff pretty much my whole life. Thus, I did some time in pre-school before I got big enough to get called up to the big show.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of highlights that stick in one’s memories from these times. I can vaguely recall an intense day of ring around the rosie and one of the group photos from pre-school with my missing front teeth and Andrew H. throwing sand at the camera man. But most days are missing their finer details.
The day that traumatically sticks out though was at Davis Parent Nursey School one afternoon when mom came to pick me up. I was playing on the slide with one of my Star Wars figures waiting for Mom to pick me up and in the confusion of her getting there and the little plastic man going down the slide I forgot to grab him. When I remembered that I hadn’t done so we went back to get him and he was missing. I dug into the sand and wept. What probably had happened was that in the meantime so other kid nabbed him (I believe it was the figure called 4Lom at the time, later to be named Zuckuss).
image 57 A pre-school group photo and the lost soldiers in the war of being a goofy kid and not paying attention, Bossk and 4lom(Zuckuss).
This wasn’t my first toy loss in such a manner. Around this same time in my life, I brought Bossk with me to Cattleman’s for a nice steak dinner under the buffalo head.Cattleman’s for those not in the know is a small chain of steak resturants in California. It features western themes, the most prominite of which is the Buffalo trixhy mounted on the wall. While playing with him he somehow slipped into the bench and out of reality never to be seen again. Probably during a remodel of the floor plan, he popped back up, but who knows where he lives now. There was also the die cast airplane that got lost in a snowbank somewhere on the way to Utah.
I was so little at the time I don’t remember why I loved this little hot wheels scale die cast airplane, with its orange top and silver bottom, but I did. On one of our long car trips we stopped at a rest stop to take a rest and play in the snow. I threw the plane, poorly, to dad as we were making it fly over the snow, and watched it instead of gliding into Dad’s hand, crash into the snow bank.
Like many mysterious plane crashes when we went to the site of the accident there was no wrecked to be found. After some searching by Dad the entire plane was classified as lost at snow and we had to move on with our trip. Let this be a lesson to little people, don’t bring your toys that matter to you anywhere, nature wants to take them from you.
