"Hit me with your best shot!" - Pat Benatar
It was the spring of 1973, just a few days before my 3rd birthday. My family made their annual trek down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina from our hometown of Glen Rock, New Jersey to stay in our trailer in Ocean Lakes Campground. To the best of my abilities to put the timeline together, we left Glen Rock on Saturday, April 7th, 1973. We drove straight through to Myrtle Beach. My dad always drove "straight through" like it was a test of his manhood. He would get off of his shift at the police department, usually around midnight and catch about 4 hours of sleep before we left as the first rays of dawn appeared in the sky.
"Every man's memory is his private literature." - Aldous Huxley
The picture above is a Polaroid, labelled on the back, in my mom's handwriting, with "My 2nd birthday cake." I'm not sure why there are 3 candles, but I don't think it's my 3rd birthday cake, unless we celebrated before we left New Jersey. I'm pretty sure that the finger just creeping into the picture on the right hand side is my grandmother's, and my mother is just out of frame on the left.
My parents went to Myrtle Beach for every vacation possible from just after they were married in the late 40's until I was 5 years old. They made 30 years of vacation memories there, many of them at Ocean Lakes Campground, which is still being operated by the same family who opened it in 1970. My parents have always been "trailer people" and camped in a succession of progressively larger trailers until my dad retired in 1980. I know the proper word is "RV" but back then, they were just trailers. My parents always dreamed of living in Myrtle Beach when my dad retired, and he made that dream come true as soon as he turned in his police uniforms.
"Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us." - Oscar Wilde
I have many childhood memories from our times at Ocean Lakes. There was the time when our toy poodle, "Susie" ran away and we found her swimming in the ocean. After that, she always liked to go for a swim. Towards the end of her life, she disappeared during a thunderstorm and we found her swimming in a nearby lake. I remember watching my dad grill chicken outside of our trailer and seeing him drop a piece in the sand, look around for my mother, pour some beer over it, squirt it off with the hose and drop it back on the grill. I remember fishing in one of the lakes at the campground and catching 5 fish, while everyone else went home empty-handed.
I also have very vivid memories of the time my dad decided to ride out a hurricane in our 17 foot travel trailer about 100 yards off the beach at Ocean Lakes. It was not a smart decision, but my father has always been a very stubborn Dutchman. The police came through the campground telling us all to evacuate immediately, but my father earned his vacation time, damn it! He would NOT be chased back to New Jersey just because of some wind and rain. I don't remember which storm this was, or how old I was. I just remember being very scared. My parents decided to stay awake and watch, but my brother and I went to sleep... or tried to. We were on the top bunks in the back of the trailer, about our parents' beds, but they were at the kitchen table up front. My father tied and strapped the trailer down as tightly as he could, but I remember it rocking back and forth violently in the wind. I also remember at some point opening the little roll-out window in my bunk and seeing one of the coolest things I have ever seen to this day. Out over the ocean, which was basically right up to our trailer, I watched a whole cluster of bright bluish-white balls of light zoom across the sky less than 20 feet above the water. I assume it was some form of ball lightning, but I was amazed by it. What I don't remember, because I didn't see it, was that at some point through the night, the pop-up trailer in the site next to ours, whose occupants also elected to ride out the storm, flew up into the air about 30 feet, by my dad's estimate, flipping as it flew, and crashed back to the ground. The terrified, but not seriously hurt couple inside ran to their car for shelter and stayed there until morning, when the storm had passed. I do remember that when my dad opened the door in the morning, the water was almost to the floor level of our trailer. I also remember that it smelled bad and there were fish in it.
While that was one of the most frightening experiences of my young life, for my parents it paled in comparison to what happened on April 9th of 1973. It was only our second full day at the campground and we had the rest of the week ahead of us before we would have to return home on Sunday, April 15th. My brother had to be back in school on April 16th and my father also had to return to work.
“Pain is such an uncomfortable feeling that even a tiny amount of it is enough to ruin every enjoyment.” – Will Rogers
Though many of my childhood memories before the age of 6 are hazy and fragmented, I clearly remember what I was doing when "it" happened. We met another family in the campground who was also there from Glen Rock. We went over to each other's houses occasionally and the father was an auxiliary police officer. They had a son my age and a daughter my brother's age. Now, my brother would be 12 on May 11th and this girl was also 11, but she was huge. She was more of a man than my brother. The two of them would play baseball together in the campground and she could hit a ball farther than him. Everyone considered her a "tomboy" and she earned that moniker. She was also just plain mean.
I was playing in the sand at the edge of our campsite with their little boy. We were using our little Tonka trucks to move sand around and build roads and all sorts of things. We were lost in a world of our own creation. I never noticed that this girl whose name I don't remember (I used to, but it has escaped me now) had moved over to where we were playing and was taking practice swings with her baseball bat right over our heads. My mom told me tonight that she walked out of the trailer to check on me a few times, and each time told the girl to get away from us if she was going to be swinging that bat. Mom told me that each time she came out, the girl was right back over us. I think I vaguely remember her being there and taunting us a few times, but mostly she was quiet. I knew she had a bat, but I didn't think about her swinging it. I wasn't even going to turn three until the next day!
At some point I stood up from the ground and the aluminum bat made solid contact with the center of my forehead. She had timed her swing perfectly and taken a home run cut. I don't remember if I screamed, or lost consciousness. I know I was on the ground. I think my mom carried me into the trailer. She told me tonight, when I called her to refresh this story in my mind, that she cleaned me off and as she did so, she watched a huge lump form quickly on my forehead and swell to a size that split the skin in only a few minutes. Now I was bleeding quite a bit. My mom told me that my eyes kept rolling back and soon began vomiting.
My parents rushed me in their car to Ocean View Memorial Hospital, pictured above, about 10 miles to the north. The doctors at the emergency room there saved my life. I received stitches in my forehead and my parents were told that when I was released, I had to be kept in cool darkness and not moved for two weeks. My brother was going to miss a week of school and get to stay at the beach instead. My father had to make arrangements to have his shifts on the police force covered for the week. My little misfortune earned everyone an extra week of vacation. My mom took care of me and made sure that our trailer was as dark and cool as possible for the next two weeks. She told me that she brought me straight from the hospital over to the girl's house to show her parents what their daughter had done. Her father pulled up the bandage, looked at my damaged face and replied, "Looks like he'll live."
I don't remember my birthday, and actually my memories of the 3 years after that incident are extremely fragmented. My memories don't become coherent again until I remember being nearly 6 years old. Then, my timeline returns to normal. I have always been plagued by fierce headaches, and developed a bit of a "lazy eye" (ambleiopia) by the time I was in 2nd grade. My smile has always been a bit lopsided, with the left corner of my mouth turning up normally, but not the right, which barely turns up. Lately, when the stress of my job was at its worst, the headaches, when they were particularly bad, were sometimes accompanied by a slight tic of my head jumping to the left every now and then. I haven't had it since I quit my job, so I take that as a good sign.
“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” – Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Why did I choose to tell this story here? Now? Well, a few days ago I posted "The Face Behind the Blog" and had to include a picture of myself. I got as much of a close-up as possible, but with the size of the photo and the lighting conditions, it is difficult to see one of my most characteristic features. It shows the best when I'm sunburned, embarrassed, or angry and tends to freak out the people who do notice it. Most people only see it when it's pointed out to them, or when I'm in one of the above conditions and they ask, "What's that?" I tell them someone took the advice of The Ramones that I used for my title.
As I got older, my brother used this feature, along with the fact that all three of my names have 6 letters (666), to justify calling me the "Anti-Christ." You see, ever since that day almost 35 years ago, I have a small (just under an inch tall and about a half-inch wide) cross in the center of my forehead (or at least it was the center before my hair began it's retreat up my scalp) just above my brow ridge.
The detail photo above doesn't even quite do it justice. I took it myself with normal lighting and no sign of anger, embarrassment, or sunburn. I can see it clearly though, but maybe that's because I know where to look. People who do notice it sometimes ask me if I ever take it as some sort of sign from God, but I'm not really sure what it would be a sign of, or why I would merit such a thing. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there with a mark like this on my forehead.
The only times I ever think about it are when someone notices it (I can just make it out on the picture in the other post, but then I know exactly where to look), when I go to an Ash Wednesday service, or when I was Lutheran and there was a baptism ("You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever."), or sometimes my eyes drift up to it when I look in the mirror or see a picture of myself with any level of close-up detail. I don't think it means that I'm the "Anti-Christ" whatever that means. I'm not "born again" or anything (once was enough - as big as I've grown I think it would really hurt my mom the second time around). I just don't attach any special significance to it, or even think about it often. I was thinking about it tonight though. I thought it would add another dimension of "face" behind the blog. It's one of my strange stories... one of a string of strange injuries I've endured (hit by a falling tree, brown recluse bite - thankfully small and quickly treated, bitten by horse, industrial drain "snake" suddenly snap its packaging when I worked in a hardware store and lodge in my knee, broken rib from sanctioned BMX racing, etc.). I don't even get hurt like normal people. I always have to do things my own way.
“Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories." - Steven Wright
I got my return call this afternoon regarding the interview I went to on Friday evening. They were quite impressed by my extensive knowledge of music and movies, and thought my friendly, out-going nature would suit me well for this job at a retail CD and DVD store. Since I asked for a good bit more money than is customary for an entry-level position in this company, I am going to start out with the wage I requested (which was as high as I could go unfortunately), but I am only going to be working an average of 30-35 hours each week. I'm used to working 60-80 hours a week. So, I start training on Monday. After my training period, I am supposed to meet with the store manager from the smaller, but busier store closer to my house and schedule the necessary background check, drug test and interview for a management position at that store. If I get a management position in the next month, the financial situation will be difficult but acceptable, especially if any of the queries I am planning on sending out amount to any paid freelance writing gigs. I've been extremely honest that I have to seek higher pay at the first opportunity, whether it's within their company, or elsewhere. They seem anxious to make that happen, so please continue to send me good vibes, positive thoughts, prayers, and best wishes.
“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain” – William Faulkner
