Who's In Charge?

It certainly wasn't the last time my parents would be summoned to a school of mine, but it might have been the first. I was in the first grade at Clegern Elementary School in Edmond, Oklahoma and my parents had just gotten a call from my teacher. It seems there was a problem with their son, and she wanted to talk about it with them.



It seems my class had just gone through picture day the day before. We had all filed into the gym in an orderly manner and were taking our places on the risers, when the problems started.

"Well, you see, he was telling all the kids where to go and where to stand," the teacher told my parents.

My parents sat and looked at the woman. She was a young teacher, her first year, but she could tell that my parents hadn't understood the seriousness of the event.

"I don't understand the problem," my mother said.

"Well, the problem was," she whined. "They were all listening to him."

Better Put Your Name On It

It all started with my sister, Stacy. Since she was the oldest and had started a family first, she began requesting, or in some cases, commandeering things from my parents house. Nothing huge. The first I remember is that she took all our original Winnie-the-Pooh books.



"What do you mean she took them?" I asked my mother.

"I don't know," she said. She was sitting in the living room floor, working on that week's ballet class. She looked up at me and said, "She asked if she could take them, and since I wasn't doing anything with them, I said yes."

I just looked at her.

"Oh honey," she said, "I didn't know you wanted them. They were just a couple of old books. You can have something else."

The thing was, I didn't really want anything else. I was a bachelor living in an apartment in Philadelphia. I had no wife, let alone kids. I don't even know what I would have done with the books, but it was one of the few artifacts from childhood that might have meant something to me. I would have liked to have them, but I had missed out. Apparentlty, the memories of my youth were already being plundered and if I was going to get in on the action, I was going to have to start thinking ahead.

Looking back, I realize it didn't really start with my sister, really. In college, I got the idea that since my grandmother was getting old, I needed to go visit her and write down some of her stories. I took a week off, and flew to Oklahoma City, OK and spent a week at her house. We looked through old photo albums and she told me stories of great aunts and uncles, great grandparents I never knew, and her days growing up in Kansas. During that time, I showed interest in some of her old books.

"Well," she said. "I'll just have to put your name in them, and when I die, they'll be yours."

This started me thinking, and I asked her about some of her paintings. My grandmother, who we called Nino, was an amatuer landscape painter. Her work was quite good, but they were all copies. To my knowledge, few of her paintings were original compostions. There was one in particular that I especially liked. It had hung in the den in my grandparents old house and I had spent hours as a young boy, lying on the old leather sofa and staring at it. The painting was of an old horse-drawn wagon filled with hay, on a country road. My grandmother said that getting the hay right had been the hardest part and she had struggled to make it not look like a big hairdo. It was by far, my favorite. But again, I was too late. An older cousin who lived in Oklahoma had already claimed it. So I asked about another one. The painting of the old dutch windmill. She put my name on it, and years later, much to my Aunt Carolyn's dismay (it had been one of her favorites, too), I was given the painting.

My wife, Jane, considers my family's discussion of post-death memorabilia to be peculiar at best, and morbid at worst. She calls it my family's preoccupation with death. I simply like to think of it as a practical way to avoid a bitter family argument over who gets what. It's not a perfect system, but then what is?



Surprisingly, we haven't split my parents house completely up, yet. For one thing, they're still young and very much alive. But we have begun dividing and conquering already. My little brother, Brad, and his wife somehow got to the piano first, but not before I'd snagged the piano stool, which had been my Uncle Will's. Somebody got Uncle Will's old chair too, but I don't remember who. Probably Stacy.

Stacy and I have different connections to the things in my parents house than our younger siblings do. Stacy and I, for instance, remember when that stationary rocker sat in my Uncle Will's house in Joplin, MO. To my other brothers and sisters, it's just a chair they've always known. It doesn't hold any more, or less, sentimentality for any of us. It just has its basis in different memories.

The grandfather clock, that I managed to snag, probably has more sentimental value for some of the younger kids, because they probably don't remember living in the house without it. In fact, as far as my youngest brother is concerned, my parents have only ever lived in one house, whereas I think of their house on Broad Street in Hatfield, as just their most recent home. But I think I grabbed the clock when I found out the piano had been taken. It was more of a desperation move.

Some of the items we've claimed, my parents have given up to us immediately, like the piano. But others we will have to wait, either until they die, or until they move into a smaller home that won't accomodate the massive amount of stuff.

As I am the executor of my parent's will, I'm hoping that our continued discussions on who-gets-what will end up in a smooth dispursement of the spoils by the time my parents pass away. In fact, to my knowledge, other than dividing whatever money is left over in the estate, no specific items are mentioned. Rather than my parents deciding what they will leave to whom, we've started calling dibs. As a big family with a lot of kids, you learned early on to call for what you wanted. Whether it was the front seat or the wishbone, we have a long history of claiming things of value.

But, seeing as my parents are only in their early sixties, and in good health, this is all a little premature. They have a good many years to both accumulate memorable artifacts, as well as to lose or give them away. They'll probably move at least once, if not more. And each of us will find new attachments to old things, or old attachments to new things, whatever the case may be.

But when it comes time for my parents to leave us, as sad as it will be, we'll all be ready to yell, "Shotgun."

Asian Fusion.

She had avoided capture by lying facedown in the sea and pretending she was dead until the soldiers left. She had lived in a large beautiful home, had boxes of jewelry and cash and being that her husband was an important man, she lived a life of luxury. She had escaped on a boat with hundreds of other people, with no place to lie down, no place to go to the bathroom, no water, and no food. And now, here she was in America, cleaning our house.



I don't know who was taking care of her kids while she was taking care of us, but I know she had kids around our ages; a little younger, even. I remember meeting them once, but I don't ever remember ever socializing. They never came to play and we never went to their house.

Her name was Bachtu. I don't even know if that's how she spelled it. I don't remember ever having to spell it, even though I know I was reading and writing by then. She was polite, as Vietnamese always are, and kind to us. I think she had genuine affection for us although I don't remember giving her any reason to do so. Her English was sketchy at best and I remember ignoring her demands and running away from her.

My father was working for FIFE, a manufacturing company that made guidance systems for printing presses. My mother had turned her small ballet and gymnastics school into a full-blown school with students that ranged from 3 years old, to college cheerleaders. There was a ballet studio, with mirror covered walls, as well as a large gymnastics arena that included all the basic equipment like tumbling mats, uneven bars, balance beam, rings, etc.

So during the day, when my parents were at work, Bachtu came and took care of us. I'm not sure how long this went on, but I don't think it was long. We only lived in this house for two years and I remember that later she got a job at the high school cafeteria. I also remember that one of her sons lost an eye in an accident with a B-B gun that ricocheted off the sidewalk.

For the most part, Bachtu came to our house, watched over us while she vacuumed and cleaned the house, then left when my mother came home. But on a few occasions, my mother was going to be late, and Bachtu offered to cook dinner as well, so that when my parents got home, everything would be ready.

The first time this happened, she cooked us a traditional Vietnamese meal. There were some stringy noodles that tastes like they were made out of plastic, some sort of eggroll, and a rather large pot of rice.

In the Midwest, where my parents grew up, rice was not a staple on the dining room table. In fact, it was rarely offered, because if you were going to have a starch with your meal it was most certainly going to be potatoes. If you did happen to have rice, it was considered a side and you might get a cup of rice on one corner of your plate that you would soak with butter to make it palatable.

This was enough rice to last us a few weeks. I'd personally never seen so much rice at one time. Of course I was in the first grade, so what did I know, but I don't believe my parents had ever seen a quantity of rice like this either.

"Now that's a lot of rice," my father said.

Bachtu gave my mother a worried look, and my mother quickly added that everything looked wonderful, thanking Bachtu again for making dinner, which made Bachtu smile.

We used to laugh about it. Not in a mean way. We just didn't know any better then. We'd never seen anyone eat a plate of rice. Even potatoes were just a side, with meat, or at least fish, being the main component of the meal. It had never occurred to us that rice might be the main ingredient.

Even before our diets were so influenced by Asian cuisine, my father was eating large bowls of rice. I'd think back to Bachtu and wonder what she'd started.

Later, after we had moved to Pennsylvania and my father was working for the Seminary and we were poor again, I'd think back to the time when we had a maid. It was strange to think that there had been a time when such things happened. And I'd wonder what Bachtu was doing.

Bachtu eventually started some small company along with her husband, and I'm sure they were successful, but like many immigrant families, their main concern was building a better life for their children. I don't know about Bachtu, but her children all went on to very good colleges, and became successful doctors, engineers and lawyers. It's the American way, after all.

The Children of Pacifists

From nursery school through the eighth grade, I attended seven schools in three states. I remember more than one nursery school, one in Oklahoma when we lived with my grandmother, and one in Tennessee. For the first and second grades, we lived in Oklahoma and I attended both the local public school, which I could walk to, and a weird experimental school, to which I couldn't.

In third grade we moved back to Pennsylvania and I returned to Penn View Christian School, where I had attended Kindergarten with Ms. Black. I stayed there for third and fourth grades, then, in my fifth year, we transferred to Plumstead Christian School. Plumstead was a bit of a hike, and my father had to drive us fifteen minutes just so we could catch the bus to school, which was another thirty or forty minutes away. A year later, we were back at Penn View, the commute proving just too long.



I would stay at Penn View until I graduated the eighth grade, at which time I went on to the public high school rather than attend Christopher Dock, the high school associated with Penn View.

Penn View Christian School was a Mennonite school. We lived in a large Mennonite community and while we were not Mennonite ourselves, it was a Christian school and that was good enough for my parents.

Mennonites, I was to learn, were followers of Menno Simons (you do have to wonder why they didn't call themselves Simonites). Menno was born in Switzerland in 1492, the same year Columbus discovered America. In 1536, he resigned his post as a Catholic priest and became an Anabaptist elder in Zurich. Though not an imposing figure, his writings were very influential in the Anabaptist community until his death in 1559. Around 1620, the Swiss Mennonites split into Upland Mennonites and Lowland Mennonites because of differences on excommunication, buttons and shaving. All, very important theological distinctions. The Upland Mennonites became our modern day Amish, and the Lowland Mennonites became the people I went to school with.

Even modern day Mennonites are divided into groups. They ranged on a scale from orthodox conservative to rather lackadaisical. One the one end, are black bumper Mennonites, so called because they paint the chrome on their cars black, so as not to appear flashy or worldly. Of course, they are already a step up from the Amish who refuse to own cars, use electricity or even zippers.

Next come your run of the mill, old-school Mennonites, who dress "plain" and whose women wear the traditional "bonnet" on their head. This was in response to a part of scripture that demanded that women's heads remain covered. Presumably this had started out with something closer to a burka, but had been whittled down to the current white lace doily that they bobby-pinned to their head like a bun.

Finally, you have your modern Mennonites who look like everyone else. They go along with the whole pacifist thing, so they aren't very good recruiting material for the armed services, but as far as I could tell, they didn't look or act any different from anyone else I knew.

The kids I went to school with came from families who were a combination of the above. They were sons of farmers and daughters of bankers. Some of the girls wore makeup and short skirts, and some of the girls wore traditional bonnets and long wool stockings. Some kids lived in brand new developments, some kids lived on 150 year old farms.

They were not necessarily all pacifists.

I wouldn't say I got in a lot of fights, but a lot more than you would think in a school of pacifists. I guess you could say that pacifism is not a natural state. It is a philosophy that must be learned. But as kids, not everyone had fully embraced the ideals of their elders.

I often wonder how commited those kids I went to school with are today about their pacifism. Especially in light of our current state of affairs in the Middle East. Of course it's easy to claim to be a pacifist when you live in a country with a volunteer army. Most people don't want to necessarily go to war. Most people aren't pro-war. But does that make you a pacifist? I guess no one knows for sure, but there are a few kids I'd like to meet up with again and ask.

A Plague Of Locusts

The year we lived in Nashville, TN, there was a plague of locusts. I guess they didn't really call it a plague then, but the locusts showed up around every seven years or so, and the one year we lived there, they were everywhere.



I was in nursery school at the time, and somehow I got the idea that I could sell locusts to the neigbors. The fact that everyone's yard, and even inside their homes, were crawling with locusts, did not squelch my enthusiasm. I can only assume that locusts were the only thing I had in abundance, so that's what I decided to sell.

I found a cardboard box that wasn't being used and began collecting bugs from off the trees in the front yard. When I had collected what I deemed was an adequate amount, I began going door to door.

Now my product may not have been that appealing, and you would be hard pressed to position my product against the competition, but my packaging was right on target. Never underestimate a cute, blond preschooler. I sold several of those nasty little buggers. Although I did find it a little strange at the time, that while a few of the ladies in the neighborhood bought locusts from me, they refused delivery. I may have been confused but was not offended in the least as it meant that I could keep selling without having to restock.

Today I'm a Partner and Director of Creative Services for a national advertising and marketing agency. Coincidence? I think not.

The New School Experiment

In my second grade year, my parents decided to enroll us in an experimental school. Actually it wasn't all that experimental; amatuer was more like it. The year we attended was, I believe, the first year of its existence, and it might have been its last although I don't know for sure because the next year we moved to Pennsylvania.



We were living in Edmond, Oklahoma and friends of ours from church had decided to join this school. So we did too. It was a private Christian school and all the teachers were parents of other students. I don't know if they were paid or unemployed, but few of them seemed qualified. One teacher I remember was our science teacher, that is when we had science, which was whenever he felt the urge, or we pestered him. Science usually amounted to stories of his time in the Navy. It seems like he'd been in a war, but I can't remember which one. I have a feeling it was WW II. The only thing I remember us ever doing that was remotely scientific, was when we dug up an ant hill and put the contents into a big mason jar so we could watch the ants work. This we found fascinating, so that whenever we had science after that, we'd just pull the ant jar out and have a look. Occasionaly we'd throw spiders and scorpions in for the ants to attack, dismante and then presumably, eat.

We met in an abandoned school, or maybe it was an old church. Either way, it wasn't designed for us, and I think we were the only ones there. There were only about 30 students in the entire school, so we were grouped into small groups that were at least close in grades. My group included something like Kindergarden through the third grade. There were five of us. I don't remember how far up in grades it went, but it couldn't have been beyond middle school as my sister was one of the older kids and she had to have been in the sixth grade.

This was the year I had Mononucleosis, the kissing disease. I was not happy about this, most of all because I was told it was called the kissing disease and I hadn't been kissing anyone. I was also not allowed to do anything remotely active so that my spleen didn't burst, which usually isn't a problem because one of the main symptoms of Mono is that you're really tired. Some patients have to be hospitalized, especially children. I had no such luck. I was never tired the entire time I was supposedly sick, and so was just a second grader who couldn't run, jump or play.

I do remember one time when an older boy threw me down on the ground and my sister beat the crap out of him. I may be exaggerating things as she might have simply slugged him and called him names. She was being very protective. Of course, if my spleen had burst, I could have very well died.

One of the girls in my "class" (I forget her name) had perpetually chapped lips. She must have licked them continually to the extent that all around her mouth was chapped. Because of this, her mother, who was a piece of work herself, would cover her lips, and all the area around them, with red lipstick. She looked like bozo the clown. I was constantly creeped out by her.

Her mother was one of those big-haired women who wore loud clothes and too much makeup. She was a stage mom, only without a child worthy of the stage. At lunch time, when the rest of us would be unpacking our brown paper bag lunches, she would swoop into school, bringing with her takeout from someplace she'd stopped on the way. She and her daughter would sit with us and eat fried chicken, or hot sandwhiches, or whatever she'd picked up, while the rest of us stared at our soggy peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches.

We had a school recital (I don't know what else to call it) which was kind of like a variety show. I was supposed to sing, "I'm A Yankee Doodle Dandy" and had learned the part and was prepared to sing it. But there was a part in the song, when I had to sing about my "yankee doodle sweetheart" and at that point, Bozo, the lipstick girl was supposed to walk up and stand beside me. This I could not do, so I backed out of the part and let my friend Sam do it. Instead I recited some stupid poem or something. I liked that song, but there was no way I was going to call her my "yankee doodle sweetheart."

It was a strange school year, to be sure, but I must have learned something. I do remember it was the year I learned how to write in cursive. Also, the following year we went to a new school in Pennsylvania, and I had to go to the next grade up when it came time for English class.

My new school had normal teachers, and buses and a gym and a principal and all the other normal things a kid expects his school to have. It didn't have red ant hills, and no one showed up with takeout, but no one told us war stories either and everyday was pretty much the same. It was when I first realized that normalcy is overrated.

Never underestimate the entertainment value of unpredictability.