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Stories of the author as a boy
by
Charlie Close
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Charlie Close on Smashwords
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Stories of the author as a boy
Copyright © 2011 by Charlie Close
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Table of Contents
Dedication
For my wife Kathy, my mother, my father, and all my coaches.
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I have never understood what the term loss of innocence means. You see it in movie trailers about young men being sent to war, or documentaries about the Kennedy and King assassinations. The phrase almost always signals that something bad is about to happen.
Most of the time it means nothing to me. I may feel sad when something bad happens, or angry, but I don’t feel less innocent. What does it mean to feel innocent? I have no idea. Loss of innocence is an abstraction. It doesn’t connect me to anything.
But I recently read a news article that reminded me of something that happened years ago. Nothing bad happened then. Nothing about it made me feel sad or angry. Actually, I think of it as one of the funny stories of my life growing up, something I could tell at a party: “Hey...when I was thirteen –”.
It’s a story that couldn’t happen the same way today. It would have a whole different meaning. The difference between what it meant then and what it would mean now – maybe that’s loss of innocence. If it is, then I think I get it.
Hey...
When I was thirteen I was in the seventh grade. It was 1980. Miss Wilbers was my Life Sciences teacher. I don’t remember much of what we studied – probably reptiles and mammals, the plant cycle, and some anatomy. How many bones are there in the human body? There are 206, Miss Wilbers.
Oh...and one other thing she taught us that I will never forget. She helped us remember the difference between latitude and longitude.
“Latitude is fatitude,” she said.
She spoke with a sweet accent that I now realize was from Tennessee or the Carolinas. As she said this she gestured a circle with her hands that started at her stomach and went around to her back.
Latitude is fatitude. Funny, I can’t remember how many t’s there are in latitude, but I know that it goes around the middle. I will always know.
There was one other day in her class that I remember well. That was the day she taught us about blood types.
“All our blood is mostly the same,” she said, “but in some ways it’s different. We have different types of blood. Now, there are four different types: A, B, AB, and O.”
Miss Wilbers went on to explain that people with some types could donate blood to people with some types but not to others. “So when you donate blood, the doctors have to test your blood to see what type it is.”
The class waited for her to explain what this had to do with us.
“Okay,” she said. “Raise your hands if you’ve heard of blood types.”
I raised my hand. My mom had gone back to school and had studied biology. She always talked to my brother and me about the things she learned.
About half the hands in the class were raised. “Good,” she said. “Now how many of you know what your blood type is?”
This time all but three or four hands lowered. Mine was still raised. I knew my blood type because my mother had told me. My type was A-positive, or, as I liked to think of it, A+.
“Good,” she said. “Well, after today we’re all going to know. We’re going to have some fun testing our own blood.”
The class’s attention picked up. How were we going to do that?
Miss Wilbers walked to the back of the room where a metal cart sat. Most of us had not noticed it. She said, “I’m going to pass out the materials that you will need to perform the experiment. Hold on while I come around.”
Our classroom was made for science experiments. We sat in rows of black Formica countertops instead of desks. Our teacher rolled her cart up and down the aisles. She set a plastic cup smaller than a shot glass in front of each of us, and a small plastic bottle of what looked like eye drops between each pair of students.
Miss Wilbers returned the cart to the back of the room and walked back to the front. “Okay,” she said. “Now to do this experiment each of you will need to give a drop of blood so that you can test it.”
A jolt went through the class. Drop of blood?
Miss Wilbers smiled and continued on as if this were a normal day in class. “I’m going to come around and you’re going to hold up a finger and I am going to give it a little pinprick.”
We looked at each other. Pinprick? That sounded like it was going to hurt.
“It won’t hurt, trust me,” she said. “Just a quick poke. You’ll hardly feel it.”
The class calmed a little and grew more serious.
“Now when I poke you, I want you to squeeze one drop of blood into that cup. Just one, do you hear me?”
We all nodded. Just one.
“Good. Then we can use the chemicals in the drops I gave you. You pour a drop onto the drop of blood. The chemicals change to different colors when they mix with the blood. You’ll see different colors for different blood types.”
A whole classroom of eyes looked back down at their cups and then up at Miss Wilbers. A few eyes showed fear of needles, but most were big with excitement.
I’m going to make a confession here. I don’t remember exactly what was supposed to happen when the chemicals mixed with the blood. Did one type turn dark red and another type turn sky blue? Did one type fizz and another type shoot sparks? All I know is that when we mixed the blood and the drops we were supposed to be able to figure out our blood type. Please take my word for it.
Miss Wilbers started at the front of the classroom and worked up and down the tables. Each student held out a finger and she stuck it with a small needle the size of a pushpin. By the time she reached the back of the room there were five rows of students, the boys with hair parted down the middle, the girls with hair feathered to the side, and each with a red-dotted finger.
Each of us held a over the cup and carefully squeezed until a drop loosened and fell into it. The mood was serious but verging on giggly.
I was the exception. I had held out my pinky finger, and Miss Wilbers poked it and continued on. But when I wrapped my hand around it to get a drop, I didn’t get just a drop. A thin stream shot two feet into the air. If any blood landed in the cup it was only by chance.
Whoooa!
I stopped breathing. How did I get to be so lucky that I, of all the boys and girls, could actually squirt blood?
No one saw my trick the first time, so I did it again. I launched another steam straight up and watched the droplets land on the desk and the floor in front of me. Theme music began to play in my head.
Darren James, who sat on my right, gasped, and that made Jim Piso, who sat directly in front of me, turn around. Jim looked at me holding my finger out and followed the trail of blood to the floor.
He looked back up at me and I looked at him with a big smile. I held up my pinky gun in his general direction. Ah so, Mr. Piso, we meet again...
Jim’s eyes narrowed. Darren leaned forward and I faced a moment of decision.
“You do that,” said Jim, “and you’re dead.”