three memories

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i don't remember exactly, but i think the barbie got shitcanned when i hit kindergarten.

not because i'd tired of her (i hadn't), or because my friends teased me (they didn't), or because my father disapproved (he no doubt did, but never said a word).

it was none of those things--it was more like one day i opened my eyes, saw what was up, made the safe choice and never looked back.

poor linda hussey and her barbie up the street probably never knew why my barbie and i suddenly stopped returning their calls.

get over it, linda.

*     *     *     *     *

his name was mike baxter, i found out by casually asking around after spotting him on the playground that first day of fourth grade.

that afternoon, i got on his bus, got off where he did, trailed him at a safe distance and then walked home (as luck would have it, not too far).

the following saturday, i biked over to his street and rode aimlessly up and down until his sister noticed me.

"have you seen my friends?" she hadn't, but invited me over to play until they showed up.

at the end of that day, the baxter family piled into their car and headed off to dinner somewhere, with mike hanging out the left rear window, waving at his fine new friend and grinning from ear to ear until they disappeared from sight.

and i sat there astride my bicycle, waving back, thinking, "gotcha."

*     *     *     *     *

his name was ricky brock and he couldn't have been any more fey if he'd tried; ricky's saving grace was, he didn't seem to care.

we spent hours talking on the phone over the course of that eighth-grade year, although i wouldn't have been caught dead talking to him at school (he didn't seem to care about that either).

he didn't even seem to care the day i sketched that caricature which so perfectly captured his mincing walk and passed it around health class--he laughed along with everybody else.

thank god being bullied back then wasn't painful like it is today.

_______________________

this post was inspired by the story of a boy who, like ricky, didn't hide.  may his sweet young soul rest in peace.

oh, jackie

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note:  whenever reading anything mkf ever writes about any kennedy, please keep in mind it's always a conflicted collaboration between a young idealist who once viewed them as gods, and the world-weary cynic who now knows better.

*     *     *     *     *

when i first found out that (a) not only had the new widow sat down with arthur schlesinger back in early '64, sloshed some scotch over the rocks, lit a cigarette and recorded hours and hours of recollections of her white house years, but (b) choice excerpts of same were gonna be featured in their unexpurgated form in a two-hour ABC special years before she had intended their release, i sprung a lil' historical boner in spite of myself.

because this was the woman who had famously dubbed lyndon and ladybird "colonel cornpone and his little porkchop", so i was expecting some good shit.

what i shoulda remembered was, this was also the woman who had not only retroactively invented camelot, but had on very short notice managed to research, script, art direct, choreograph, stage-manage and star in the most spectacularly successful state funeral in recorded history.

in other words, i shoulda known from the get-go the whole thing would be nothing but an artful perpetuation of the kennedy myth--but still, i had high hopes.

so i DVR'd it.  and tonight, i watched.  my favorite quote [from her fevered account of the cuban missile incident her husband turned into a crisis and which is a subject for another day]:

Please don't send me away to Camp David ... Please don't send me anywhere.  If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you ... even if there's not room in the bomb shelter in the White House ... I just want to be with you and I want to die with you.

and all i could think was, "really?  then hold still, dammit."