I Swear I’ll Finish 1978, Then I’ll go Back to Being Bipolar: Really

I haven’t even gotten to sixth grade yet.

Still in 1978,… we ended with Disco.

And, thankfully, disco ended in the ‘70s,… although I’m not so sure how different I feel about today’s popular music. Lady Gaga and Beyonce and Kanye West and whoever this Ke$ha girl is annoy the ever living piss out of me much more than disco ever did. Of course, I was eleven at the time and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was number one on the Billboard charts for like 137 weeks in a row (okay,… it was fourteen,… I embellish sometimes, people,… it’s called dramatic license, live with it). I must say I vastly preferred Yvonne Ellimen’s version of “If I Can’t Have You” to the Bee Gees’. I loved that song! I’d sing along with it every time my older sisters played the album,…. “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody, baby. If I can’t have you, ah-ah-ahhh.” Then there was the time, years later, when I amended the lyrics to, “If I can’t have you, I will settle for your sister.”

The Summer wound down, and I would soon be headed back to Phillippi Shores Elementary School where I had attended fourth grade before going to the Pineview School for fifth grade. I would get to go back to having my old friends back. At least that eased the tension of the ending of the Summer. During that Summer I had forged a relationship with my older sister Allison that heretofore would have been impossible. We just simply did not like each other and never, EVER, got along. The Tampa Bay Rowdies were a professional soccer team that played its NASL games at Tampa Stadium, and the family got to attend one of those games. It was the only time in my recollection that soccer (professional soccer, anyway) seemed to matter to a large audience in America. Rowdies games attracted big crowds,… some big enough to rival the attendance number of Buccaneer games. Well,… at the game we went to, they had a promotional giveaway for the first however-many kids through the gates—they gave out mini soccer balls with the team’s green, yellow and white colors and team logo. They were cool,… to an eleven-year-old (like I said in the last chapter,… kids are stupid). But the ball was cool even to Allison who is three years older than I. She and I, who before the Summer of 1978, had been near mortal enemies, spent hours running parallel to each other down Belgrave Drive and kicking the ball to each other as if we were playing on the same team and trying to advance the ball toward an imaginary goal. We invented a game (as stupid kids are wont to do) in which we tried to keep the ball in the road as we kicked it, and we’d count how many passes we were able to complete to each other before the ball ended up in someone’s yard because of an errant kick. “Kippy” (that’s her nickname,… the source of which is a different chapter) and I loved each other that Summer. We went back to adversaries when school started, but that Summer was awesome.

When I finally set foot back on the Phillippi Shores campus, it was like I could breathe again. The thin, foggy veil of discontent and resentment was yanked away to bring a clarity of eyesight I hadn’t known in the past year. There was Scott Miller,… and Mike Mercurio,… and Kay Saunders,… and Kelly Cafiero. This was going to be the best year of school ever. And it wouldn’t hurt that I already knew the sixth-grade math textbook backwards and forwards from having completed it in the fourth grade when I was here.

For the first few weeks, everything was great, aside from my teacher, Mrs. Miller. My friends embraced me and asked how I could have survived a full year at Pineview with those egghead kids (children are cruel and closed-minded, too). I was back to being a central figure in class and at recess. I was among my people. But Mrs. Miller didn’t care for me one bit from what I could gather. My explanation at the time—and looking back on it now, I’m not so sure it wasn’t mostly true—was that I was bored. I had learned most of the stuff being taught the previous year at Pineview. In fact, I had been taught at something close to a seventh- or eighth-grade level: I even took Spanish,… a class that wouldn’t be required until we got to public High School. However, I’m sure that at least a portion of my misbehavior was attributable to me being just a kind-of regular smartass who would cut up and disturb the class and Mrs. Miller at the same time. She sent me to the principal’s office a couple of times in those first few weeks for insubordination. She saw me as a major distraction; I just saw her as a major bitch.

After those first few weeks, I noticed a shift in the attitudes’ of my friends, though. They distanced themselves from me. I heard whispers from kids talking to each other like, “conceited” and “better than us” and the worst insult in the sixth-grade lexicon: “stuck-up.” They sensed—and it’s entirely possible that I projected—that I exhibited some sort of feeling of superiority to the rest of them. Three times a week we had to walk through the hallways of the school from our regular classroom to either the chorus room or the math pod. About two months into the school year (I’m guessing early October), as I turned the corner by myself—by that time I was a social pariah,… persona-non-grata—and I heard Mike Mercurio’s voice,… loudly,… saying, “GET ‘IM BOYS!” Five kids jumped me as I turned that corner. I got kicked and punched and generally worked over for what seemed like an eternity (it was probably twenty seconds). Surprisingly, I withdrew some after that. This was going to be the worst school year of my life; Shit, I should have stayed at Pineview if I had sensed that this would happen! I was ostracized from the group: excommunicated. So I withdrew even more. Perhaps I should have noted at the time that this was my first case of significant, prolonged depression,… but, of course, I didn’t.

Also, there was this: the fourteen-game lead the Red Sox had in July was mysteriously dwindling. It got cut to ten games,… then seven,… then four. Those fucking Yankees were on a tear of epic proportions and were closing the gap,… quickly. And then, the Yankees overtook the Red Sox for first place,… this was going to be the most devastating collapse in the history of the game…. From a fourteen-game lead on July 19th to behind by three-and-a-half games in the last two weeks of the season…. However, the Red Sox did something they had done sporadically since that July high-water mark,… they started winning,… in fact, they won ten of their last twelve and tied the Yankees for the best record in the division on the last day of the season. That set up a one-game playoff to see which team would represent the American League East in the Division Series against the Kansas City Royals (yes, young baseball fans, the Royals were once a good team,… before the fucking Yankees started buying players—and thus championships—at ridiculous sums and bloating their payroll upwards of $200 million per season). However, the one game would be at Fenway Park and not Yankee Stadium. That game was played on a Monday afternoon. (What? Day Baseball? In the Playoffs?) I had football practice at six o’clock, but I didn’t want to miss the end of the game which started at four. I begged my mom to let me stay home from practice just that one time so I could watch the ending, but she pulled out the “you made a commitment to the team” card. What shitty logic. Logic that I, of course, would one day use with my own child. We had only ten minutes left before we had to get going to Phillippi Shores—which was coincidentally the location of the pee wee football practices for my team. Ten minutes? It was only the sixth inning! And the Red Sox had the lead three-to-two. And then,… it happened,… as I sat there in my full football uniform: pads, cleats, jersey, pants,… Bucky Dent came up to bat. He was a scrawny little shortstop who never hit home runs,… so that wasn’t a worry. But there were two Yankees on base. Mike Torres was pitching for the Sox. He had had a great year for Boston, so I was confident he could induce an out from Bucky Dent. However, he hung a slider,… right over the middle of the plate,… and Bucky Dent hit it high and deep,… and over the Green Monster in leftfield for the go-ahead runs. “Johnny, if you’re going to make it on time, we need to leave now.”

This was before the days of ESPN and the internet. By the time I got home from practice and showered, I had to go to bed. I wasn’t allowed to stay up for the eleven-o’clock news to see what the final result was—hell, I was only eleven. I slept poorly. When I awoke, the first thing I did was grab the sports page only to learn that neither team scored a run for the rest of the game after I had left the house the previous day. The Red Sox lost that game 5-3, and the Fucking Yankees went on to beat the Dodgers four games to two in the World Series,… for their second championship in a row. From that day forward even to today (and probably for the rest of time to come),… to EVERY Red Sox fan in the world,… that games hero’s name changed,… He was now Bucky Fucking Dent.

I played my best game of football on the last day of the season, when my team “Cheyenne” beat the vastly superior “Arapaho” team. I chewed up yardage as a running back on offense and I sacked the quarterback a few times. I even tackled Arapaho’s monster running back once or twice—he had been barreling through kids all year. Yes,… the league was the Ringling Redskins Football League and every team was named after a different tribe of Native Americans. (I hate that term, and I know several Indians who would prefer to be referred to as Indians instead of “Native Americans.”) Interestingly, no group that waves its protected status flag in front of everybody’s faces has ever demanded that the league change its policies and transition to more politically-correct team names—as they have to the Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians and several colleges. The Ringling Redskins have kept their teams’ names the same since then. Political correctness sucks assballs anyway.

I don’t recall much more of 1978,…. I do remember that at the end of sixth grade, in 1979, my family moved from the house on Siesta Key at Belgrave Drive to a bigger abode across town on Tangier Way. My first day in that house, I was throwing a tennis ball against my new garage door when I saw two kids (who looked about my age) just whizzing down the street on their shiny BMX dirt bikes. I didn’t have a dirt bike. These kids were going to haze and hate me just like the kids at Phillippi Shores did,…. I knew it!

Except,… they eventually became two of the best friends I have ever known.

Maybe I’ll write about 1979 and the Betts boys one day. However,….

Next time,…. Is That a Light I See at the End of the Bipolar Tunnel?