Pieces of Me

When I was 10 I had two friends
Make that three
Cindy Weyna
Nyla Smith
And Becky Dickey
They didn’t like each other
We weren’t a group
They had to take turns being my friend
No one ever likes to share me
Anyway
Cindy was a bit of a goody two shoes
She had a little sister named Diana
They were rarely allowed out of their fenced yard
Diana was two years younger than Cindy and me
She was also way bigger
And one day she was sitting on the love seat in front of me and her arms were resting over her head
I saw something that frightened me
She had hair!
Under her arms!
She was only like 8 years old
It not only grossed me out but I was afraid it would happen to me
It didn’t tho
At least not for a very very long time
I didn’t even grow pubic hair til I was 19
Cindy wore glasses and had long think dark hair
She never got in trouble
Unlike me
I was always in big trouble
Then there was Becky
Becky was the youngest kid in house full of grown brothers and sisters
Her mom worked so she had much freedom
Kind of like me only she had a curfew
I hung out with Becky most
I used to think Becky and her family were rich
They had cable TV and an answering machine
Plus their house was made from bricks
Becky had bad teeth, ate mayonnaise sandwiches and played the cello
And Nyla was the second oldest of 8 or 9 kids
Their house was confusing and chaotic to me
3 year olds, teens, BB guns, Barbie dolls…
Her mom was white and her dad (who we rarely ever saw) was black
Which was rare in the part of west Seattle that we lived
I used to like a boy named Scott Anderson
I would make my dog run passed his house and pretend she got away , chase after her back and forth in front of his house til he came out to help me catch her
Once Scott asked me “will you go with me?”
I said “go where?”
He repeated the question
I repeated mine
Then he said never mind
The next day my friend Becky told me she and Scott were boyfriend and girlfriend
That they were “going together”
I finally understood what had happened
I thought if I explained to her that it was me who Scott really wanted to go with, she would understand
But not only did she not understand
She didn’t even believe me
That day after school Scott, Becky and I hung out at the park
They went off in the bushes to kiss a few times
I had a hard time with that
I knew he liked me more
Why was he kissing her?
Even tho I could tell they were trying to be alone
I stayed close by all day
Then it was finally curfew time for Becky
YAY
We walked her home
They kissed again
I nearly horked
Then Scott said he would walk me home
He was pushing his bike all day because Becky and I were on foot
But while “walking” me home he rode it
He rode slowly enough that I could keep up
But he wasn’t walking next to me like I thought he should have been
On the way he said he would tell me something if I promised not to tell Becky
I promised
But I had my fingers crossed
He told me that I was his first choice but she lived closer
I wanted to beat him up
Then he asked me if he could kiss me
I wanted to say yes
But I didn’t
instead I knocked him off his bike
I kicked in the spokes
I told him I hated him and I wouldn’t kiss him even if he was a kitten
Then I ran home and cried myself to sleep
All alone
With only my beloved Mick Jagger poster to comfort me
The next day I tried to talk to my friend Nyla about it but she didn’t seem to understand at all
We had a sort of culture gap she and I
She liked Stevie Wonder and Menudo
I liked Queen and The Bay City Rollers
That was 4th and 5th grade
We were all in the same class at E.C. Hughes Elementary
The summer between 5th and 6th grade I moved
To Lower Skyway
I hated it
I tried to stay in touch with my 3 friends but after a while we lost touch
Cindy became a drug addict/alcoholic
Becky got married and had kids at a very early age
Nyla joined the Navy and lived in Hawaii
Me, I ran away from home, traveled this country and few others, got strung out, went to jail, got clean, got married, got divorced, had kids and stuff.
I recently called Cindy’s parents house
They still live there
Still have the same number
All 3 of their phone numbers are still in my head to this day
I left a message w/ her mom but I doubt she’ll ever get it
The two and a half years I spent on 29th and Holden in West Seattle were the best times of my life
That’s the longest we has ever lived anywhere
We played in the sand pits
That's where I got stuck in wet mud that we thought was quick sand and had to crawl out of my pants and shoes to get out
That's also where I was stung by 56 hornets on the same day
Little word of advice: Just because you block the hole in hornet's nest in the ground doesn't mean they cant get out
I played baseball
There was a block party every 4th
I remember in 79 when the Seattle Supersonics won the championship
There was a block party then too
We had a park about a half block away
With a wading pool
I had a plastic banana shaped skateboard
I loved that wading pool
We listened to Queen's Another one bites the dust because it was the long running number 1 song
And The knack, Gary Newman, Billy Joel, Captain and toenail... I had all the K-tel records
I ran around free, no one to boss me around
My mom worked
Or at least that's where I believed her to be at the time
Wherever she was, it wasn't at home
I went swimming
Oh yeah swimming
I walked about 4 miles almost every single day after school
Even in the middle of winter
To the southwest community center
With my lunch money
So I could go swimming
Most of the time I was the only person there
I went because I had a crush on a lifeguard
I liked him because he talked to me like I was already grown up
And he had a nice smile
When he moved to another job
I quit swimming
I had a cat that I had had since I was 5
Her name was Daisy
I also had a bunny
Snowball (he came with that name)
Snowball was a show bunny
He had a tattoo in his ear that said R1D2
He was in love with Daisy
And she didn't seem to mind
That bunny would hump that cat
when he wasn't humping the cat
He was following her around trying to hump her
We also had two Irish setters when we lived there
Penny and Casey
We got penny when we lived in Federal way a few years earlier
We brought her with us when we moved to an apartment in the projects near Seward Park
Penny obviously didn’t like living in the hood
She took off
For almost a year
Then the weirdest thing happened
The day we were moving to West Seattle
The last truckload of stuff
Here comes Penny
Like she was just waiting all that time to leave the projects
We got Casey after we moved to West Seattle
They had 12 pups
Then Casey got mange
And I know my mom and Step Dad had him put to sleep rather than deal with it even tho they claimed to have given him to someone that would take care of him
When the last puppy was gone Penny quit eating
She quit barking at the doorbell
She quit everything
She just lay on the floor
For almost two weeks
I tried to stay near her
She seemed so sad and so sick
Then one night there was a skating party
I didn’t want to leave Penny but everyone was going to be at Skate King and I wanted to go so bad
I went
I had a great time
But when we came in the door
Penny wasn’t there
We found her in my room
Dead
Looked like she fell off the bed or something
Her legs were all twisted
I was too sad to even cry
She died because we got rid of her family
And because I went skating
She died of loneliness
I hated my mom for not letting Penny keep one of her babies
My mom tried to say that Penny was poisoned
Like that would make it all ok
That same summer we bought a picknik set from a truck on the street
We were having a BBQ
My mom's friend "Big Dave" was there
He weighed over 500 pounds
He sat on our new bench and it broke right in half
took 4 grown men to get him off the ground
I was in big trouble
as usual
this time for laughing at Fat ass Dave's misfortune
Well I guess that’s enough for now
I don’t even know what this is all about
Other than I was in west Seattle a few days ago and just being there brought back a lot of memories
I still think things would have been different
Different in a better way
Had we not moved away from there
I wonder if the live Christmas Tree I insisted we get is still planted in the front yard of 7224 29th S. W..
I wish I could afford to raise my boys there