OK, I admit it. There’s something “wrong” with me.
No, really. There’s always been something “wrong” with me. Ever since I came into this world. (Which wasn’t something I ever asked for.) But from day one I instinctively just knew… that I didn’t belong here.
See, first of all there’s this dormant gene that runs in our family. From my dad’s side. Not everybody in the clan ends up with it, just a few of us. The hermit gene. (I got it.) Which is by definition the NATURE side of the coin. And secondly (for the NURTURE side) there was my early schooling. Which we’ll get to shortly.
Take my Uncle Don, for instance. I mean, he was famous for it. He lived out his whole life in our upstairs apartment along with his mom, my grandmother; and Uncle Archie. He was a loner. No friends. Worked the night shift at a local woolen mill, that shift being just about the only time he got out of the house. He was Pleasant Street’s Boo Radley.
To illusrate: one day when I was about eight and playing with toys on the sidewalk, a passing elderly lady stopped, looked down upon me for a moment, and out of the blue asked, “What ever happened to your uncle, Don?”
I didn’t understand the question. “Whatta you mean?”
“I’m sorry. What I meant to say was, When did he die?”
“Whatta you mean when did he die? He didn’t.”
“Well, of course he did. Nobody’s laid eyes on him for years.”
“No,” I said. “He ain’t dead. He’s just upstairs.”
She frowned. Then, “OK, I guess your mom and dad didn’t think it was appropriate to discuss things like… I mean, with a child your age. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, but Uncle Don ain’t dead. He’s upstairs.”
“Well, yes, of course he is, then,” she said. “That’s… a good way of looking at it, I suppose. I really shouldn’t have asked…”
“Uncle. Don. Never. Died! He’s upstairs right now, lyin’ on the couch, swiggin’ a Narragansett, and listening to the Red Sox on the radio!”
And he really was. Up there. On the couch. Doing exactly what I told her.
I can name two of my very close relatives who, right now, are living the life made possible by our hermit DNA. And then of course there’s me. But Uncle Don was the extreme.
But I mean it’s not like we’re cave dwellers or anything. We’re urban “hermits.” Only to varying degrees, some more than others. As adults we hold down jobs because we have to. We venture out to buy our groceries because we have to. Basically we’re loners compelled to shun crowds and loud parties, and even family social gatherings when we can get away with it. We find making eye contact somewhat of a challenge. We cringe when the loud extrovert slaps us on the back with the good ol’ “How ya doin’ there, buddy?” to which we invariably mutter “Fine,” while trying to inconspicuously fade out of range. And as soon as possible, we’re hunkering back down and away once again in our little fortress-hideout apartments or bedrooms.
So I guess that kinda makes us like extraterrestrials, quietly passing as humans among you, and keeping a low profile. But that’s adult hermit-coping behavior. When you first get welcomed into the world as only a seven pound, naked, shivering soul experiencing that amusement park “ride” of getting yourself ripped from your cocoon straight into the freezing, stark, blinding lights of a maternity ward… via the hard, cold steel forceps, mind you… only to find yourself surrounded and outnumbered by gowned and gawking mask-faced giants… one of whom barbarously hoists you upside-down by your heels like a prized winner at some large mouth bass fishing contest and then, out of the blue, initiates you with (surprise!) a smarting smack on the ass… well, the only coping skills you had back then were the autonomous karate kicking and screaming your bloody lungs out.
The fact that most babies just get over that right away baffles me. I mean, me? I held a grudge. And After months of being poked and prodded, chin-chucked and jibber-jabbered at by passing “tourists” leering down at me over the petting zoo bars of my crib-cage, I had become a xenophobic toddler. Whose main coping skill was literally hiding behind my mom’s apron strings. Literally. For four or five years! Because the world is a terrifying place. I mean, the last thing I wanted was to get acquainted with anybody who didn’t already live in our house!
I guess you could say I’d developed… pathological anti-social tendencies…
And that I would need to be acclimated. That was obvious. But how?
Could public school be the answer?
In my fifth year, a rumor’d begun circulating around the breakfast table that little Tommy was to be sent away to school in the fall. I say “sent away,” because the school was situated at least six houses up the street from our house.
THE SCHOOL. The Big House. I’d seen it. The scariest Halloween building I could ever imagine. I had no idea what might be going on in a place such as that. And I didn’t want to find out. I was one big little chicken.
So I nipped the plan in the bud right away. Shook my head. “NO.”
“It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”
The thought of it was terrifying me. The world out there terrified me.
“No. I’m gonna stay here.”
“Well, of course you’ll go to school. Everybody does.”
I was adamant. “No.”
“Just think. We’ll get you some brand new clothes. And shoes. And your own little pencil box. And you can walk to school every morning with your older brother.”
My older brother is Dennis. He’d been an inmate in the slammer for two years already. And he never looked too happy about it either. Honestly? I pitied him. (I had to admit though, the pencil box was tempting. I loved drawing. I began plotting how I might get them to give me that pencil box with no strings attached.) “No. I’ll just stay here.”
I was crystal clear about my position. But Mom and Dad weren’t even listening. I was beginning to feel invisible whenever the cruelty raised its ugly head. And as time went on, I started to fear that, jeez, I might actually be gonna hafta go to school, despite what I was telling them.
It was giving me tummy aches.
But I knew I was never going there. I’d been clear on that. They’d see.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mom marched me to school in my brand new straight-jacket clothes-with-pencil-box. Back at home I’d resorted back to kicking and screaming, but… that strategy? No dice.
I was doomed.
I got “escorted” up the long sidewalk, to the chain link fence that enclosed the playground with its towering, lethal slippery slide; the jungle gym; the three teeter-totters; and the horseless merry-go-round, behind which loomed an ancient mausoleum, its window eyes sizing me up.
PLEASANT STREET ELEMENTARY ITSELF!!!
Me, sobbing, begging for mercy, as Mom solemnly dragged me through the gate. Handed me over to the big, fat, old prison playground matron, whose talons suddenly became a handcuff around my forearm. And like all the doctors back in the 50s who always callously lied to you, “This won’t hurt a bit,” she smiled down on me grimly. “You’re really going to like it here, Tommy.”
And then…
Wait! Where the hell was Mom?!?!
She was nowhere to be seen! That’s where.
She’d ditched me!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I did three years hard time there.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
PLEASANT STREET ELEMENTARY by Tommy, 2005
PLEASANT STREET ELEMENTARY
wasn’t always so… pleasant—manned by
mannish “misses,” barren, clucking,
mummies uniformed alike in wallpaper
dresses, up the sleeves of which they
tamped their precious and glistening
nose-blown hankies—
Patrolling in their black, strait-laced,
commandant high-tops… wielding their
Teddy Roosevelt Big Sticks… hungrily
ferreting out punishable felonies with
rooster eyes swollen bulbous and wild
behind their coke-bottle lenses
beneath their 1943-steel-penny-gray
schoolmarm buns…
And then? Then, at the end of each year
the administration would militarily
shuffle its Old Maid deck for
our next-year’s classroom nightmare
while you waited with the bated breath
of the russian-rouletteer
as they’d pick a card…
any card…
and then deal you…
your next year’s
classroom nightmare:
Cinderella’s Wicked Stepmother
Huck Finn’s Miss Watson
or Pip’s Miss Havisham
And can you say…
FEAR AND LOATHING?
Can you say…
P.T.S.D.?
I apologize if you find the message and tone of the above scrap of creative writing unnecessarily harsh and mean spirited. Please let me try to explain.
Overall, the primary teachers of 2026 and those of the 1950s have practically nothing in common. It was such a different world back then in so many ways. Today it’s common for little kindergartners to feel love for their K through 3 teachers. That definitely was not the case for some of us who attended Pleasant Street Elementary.
The school served a relatively tiny population and, as such, employed a small handful of educators in that building. I’m guessing five or six. Don’t get me wrong– they weren’t all as bad as I guess I’ve made them out to be. Primarily they were stern though, and weren’t a happy lot.
But of those, I am here to tell you that one, a Miss Doore, was indeed an exemplary and loving professional soul. Her classroom was unique, in that she’d had the custodian build for her and her charges an extraordinary little fairy “house” right inside its walls. It was the cutest imaginative thing.
I can attest that it was a joy to be in her care. Not because I had her as my kindergarten teacher, for I did not. No, fortune had me seated in a classroom adjoining hers, but from the singing and laughter and games and overall activity going on over there that I and my fellows could hear (daily) through the walls… it left us sad with envy. In contrast, throughout the many long days in my classroom, a pin dropping onto the floor could easily be heard. Oh, how I had wished I had landed in Miss Doore’s class.
Listen, first impressions are important, aren’t they. Well, the first, and daily subsequent impressions of my kindergarten “educator” whom luck had assigned me… had everything to do with the above little “poem” I penned above.
Now though, the plan is to enlighten you more in… Penitentiary for Toddlers, Part II, coming soon in a podcast near you.
Stay tuned…
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