We Finish 1978 Before I Go Back to Being Bipolar

1978 was longer than I remembered.

I spent my final day at Pineview in early June. I was getting the hell out of that school and going back to my friends at Phillippi Shores. It was a huge relief to my ten-year-old mind. I hadn’t wanted to go there in the first place. I felt like I had been manipulated into going there. And then I felt duped into thinking that if I at least gave it a shot, I would be allowed to leave and go back to my old school whenever I wanted,… only to find out that I had to gut it out through the entire school year. But I had made it. School was over, and the following week would be,… my birthday.

Birthdays are huge things to kids,… and rightfully so, I think. Each year that you get to add another number onto your previous age is world-altering. There’s an entirely new paradigm for a kid going from ten to eleven. I think that holds true all the way to eighteen,… or even twenty-one,…. (Forty-three,… not so much.)

I got a birthday card from my grandparents,… with a solid five-dollar bill in it. I got a card from my mother with a TWENTY. And another from my father—who had just moved from Tampa to Miami—with another TWENTY. Woo-hoo! Forty-five smackers, baby! At eleven, I was fucking rich. When my mother asked me what I wanted to do with the money, I told her I wanted to take her out to dinner at my favorite restaurant: Gigi’s Italian Ristorante,… and I wanted to bring my best friend, Scott Miller. She agreed and we set it up for a day the following week. When we got to Gigi’s, I made a huge production out of the fact that I was treating the table to dinner with my own money. My mother let me act like a big shot,… ordering the dinner selections for everyone at the table (I had the lasagna),… walking the bill up to the cashier myself and telling the lady behind the counter that everything that evening had been on me (even though that wasn’t actually the case,… the dinner came to slightly over twenty dollars, and mom told me that I should only spend one of my twenties on the night out,… she would cover the rest,… and the tip). It was later that night,… after we dropped Scott back off at his house,… that she explained to me that it’s not proper to call attention to oneself and brag about being the one taking everybody out on his dime.

At this point, I’d like to make clear that I don’t have mommy issues. To this day, I will defend everything that she’s ever done in trying to raise her four kids. She has been the doting mother for my entire life. Every now and then she tells me that she thinks she can fault herself for trying to be overprotective or sheltering of me as a kid: that she never let me take any lumps on my own growing up. I really don’t believe that’s the case,… and I’ll knock out anyone who tries to pin my shortcomings as an adult on her. I have to own those myself.

But,… back to 1978,… and my eleventh birthday. In addition to the card with the cash in it, my mother had bought me a few presents as well. The ones I remember specifically, to this day, are the three record albums I got. I was really excited to see the gift-wrapped packages that HAD to be vinyl LPs (the size and shape gave them away, duh),… with my name on them (I have a twin sister,… she didn’t get any records that day). I had asked for three albums: Paul McCartney & Wings’ “London Town,” any Bill Cosby live comedy album, and a concert album: KISS “Double Live Platinum.”

“London Town” was a big seller, and I loved the song “With a Little Luck.” I still remember the lyrics. I had become a big fan of Bill Cosby during my year at Pineview, because when it rained, and we couldn’t have gym class outside, the “Coach” would bring us to his portable classroom and play either a Bill Cosby comedy album or a videotape of the “Football Follies.” (Okay,… it was 1978,… it wasn’t a videotape,… it was a real, honest-to-goodness reel-to-reel film. It’s just possible that maybe some of the younger readers of this blog wouldn’t even know what a reel-to-reel is.) So, I wanted a Bill Cosby album. “Double Live Platinum” was another big hit in 1978 (interestingly, it was certified platinum in June,… but it never sold two-million copies,… so it wasn’t actually double platinum,… them are some cocky motherfuckers), and it was a double record,… two LPs in one cover (maybe that’s why they called it DOUBLE Live Platinum,… maybe they weren’t so cocky,… oh, yes they were!)

So,… after eyeing those wrapped LPs while I was forced to open the cards first—because the sentiment was actually more important than the material gifts,… at least, that’s what my mom told me, but try convincing me of that when the cash started falling out of those fucking cards—I finally got to rip the paper off of them. The first one was Paul McCartney and Wings’ “London Town.” Bing-fucking-go! Exactly what I wanted. The second was Bill Cosby’s “Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow… Right!” Sweet! I score again! I didn’t think I had ever heard that one before, and again, this was exactly what I had asked for. The third gift was a little thicker than the first two. (It’s “Double Live Platinum,” baby! Johnny’s gonna go three-for-three! There’s gonna be those makeup-wearing dudes on the cover! The cat one, and the one with the stars on his face,… and the other two whatever-the-fuck-they-weres!) I ripped off the paper. It was a double album. It was a concert album. It was,… “4 Way Street”??? By some fuckers called Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young? (This was a lot of years before Neil Young played with Pearl Jam, and Steven Stills’s sperm played with Melissa Etheridge’s girlfriend’s ova.) What the fuck was this piece of shit? Who the fuck are these guys? WHERE THE FUCK, EXACTLY, IS MY GOD DAMN “DOUBLE LIVE PLATINUM”???

My mother explained to me that when she saw the album cover, she decided to ask some other parents around the neighborhood just who these KISS fellas were. She had been told that they were heathens,… bad role models,… quite possibly devil-worshipping, Satanist cannibals. No way I was getting that album after that. I think I tried to listen to the CSNY album once,… one time,… for about twelve minutes. It sure as shit was no “Double Live Platinum.” I never did get that record,… in retrospect, mom probably did me a favor.

By mid-July, the Red Sox had a fourteen-game lead over the Yankees in the American League’s Eastern Division. They were going to the playoffs for sure this year—no way they could fall down with a fourteen-game lead at the All-Star break. It would be the first time in the playoffs since they lost the World Series to the Reds in ‘75. They lost the seventh game that year after Carlton “Pudge” Fisk hit a dramatic home run for the Sox in the twelfth inning of game six to force the deciding game seven,… which the Red Sox lost. But 1978 was gonna be different!

However,… that brings to mind a different story altogether,…. (Jesus Christ On Toast, John,… another fucking tangent?.... Well, yes,… this is MY blog, fuckers!) Later in life, when I was twenty-four and lived with, but was not yet married to my first wife, we took in her troubled half-brother for a month during the Summer of 1991. His name was Ernie, and he was about eight or nine at the time. He had a really difficult time with his attention span, a quick temper, and a very bad habit of interrupting people when they talked to him. Well,… one night, as a treat for him as he had been behaving well for us, I decided to take him to a minor league baseball game. The White Sox had a low-level farm team in Sarasota where I was living at the time. I got tickets, and as he and I drove to the game, I explained that I had read in the paper that morning that Pudge was going to play for the home team that night. He asked who Pudge was, and I told him I’d explain at the game. We had good seats,… right behind home plate about eight rows up. Early on in the evening, I told him to sit tight in the seats while I went to the bathroom. “But if anyone gets anywhere close to you, you scream your head off and say, ‘I don’t know this person’ as loud as you can, okay? You know the drill?” He told me he got it. And an elderly couple sitting right behind us told me that they’d keep an eye on him. I didn’t go to the bathroom. I went to the souvenir stand and bought a new baseball. I took it out of the box and scuffed some dirt on it. When I got back to the seats I handed him the ball, told him it had been used in the game, and that one of the ballplayers stuck his head out of the dugout, and gave me the ball especially to give to the kid I was sitting next to. It was a little white lie,… and he ate it up,… kids are stupid.

In the third inning the oldest player on the team, wearing number 72, came up to bat. I wanted to take advantage of the moment and provide this kid, who everyone else had given up on at the age of eight or nine, with one of those old-timey, nostalgic father-and-son type talks.

And I said to Ernie, “you see that guy batting right now?”

“Yeah,” he said back to me.

“Well,… his name is Carlton Fisk, but everyone calls him Pudge.”

“Why do they call him Pudge?”

What I wanted to say was, “I don’t fucking know, you shitbox! Quit interrupting me and let me tell you this old-timey, nostalgic father-and-son type story!”

What I did say was, “I’m really not sure, son, but they do. Anyway, the point is, he’s a guy that has been around the game of baseball for a long time,… almost twenty years,… and right now he’s down here in Sarasota rehabbing an injury before he goes back to Chicago to play for the big league club.”

“What’s ‘rehabbing’?”

(“SHUT UP, INTERRUPTING SHITBOX!”) “It’s when you get hurt and you have to get yourself healthy again by treating the injury slowly and letting your body get back to full strength…. Anyway, the point is, he’s playing here tonight, but he gave me one of the great memories of my childhood,… when I was about your age….” And I went on to tell him the story of the ‘75 Series and Pudge’s dramatic twelfth-inning home run…. It turned out to really BE one of those stupid, old-timey, nostalgic father-and-son type moments.

Then, the elderly guy behind me tapped me on the shoulder. I looked at this near-seventy-year-old guy sitting with his near-seventy-year-old wife. (There was nothing special about a couple like that in Sarasota,… it is called “God’s Waiting Room” for a reason.) He said to me, “I’m not eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help but hear you just tell that story about Carlton Fisk.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

He pointed to his wife and said, “that’s our son.”

That’s my second-best baseball memory.

Shit,… I’m done with another chapter and I haven’t even gotten to sixth grade yet.

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