The Space Between Hell and College

Bullies were always stereotypically singular and identifiable. They were the loner sweaty-faced angry kids who shoved and punched their way around knocking books out of the hands of the meek or making “meet me at 3 on the playground” challenges. They were always in the company of just themselves and the anonymous mob kids who watched, egged on and color commentated the rough handlings of these snarling malcontents like Romans in a warped Colisseum. The mob kids shouted louder when the dust rose, the fists flew. “Fight, fight. Fight!”  The mob kids had to side with the bully so they wouldn’t be next on the bloody dance card. 

Until now, I thought a bully to be handle-able.  I never took the first swing, but if I was punched first, I had permission to end it right then and there. I believed that all a bully needed to quit was a good nose bloodying, or a knee to the crotch.   I did my share of leveling the field in those days, both for myself and others.  I stuck up for the ones who couldn’t fight. Not terrifically girlie of me, I know, but my sense of social justice was simmering.

If someone would just hold my glasses and my retainer, it was on.

If adults got wind of it, we’d endure a “come to Jesus” meeting. The bully, the prey, both sets of parents and the school principal usually cleared it up. Deal sealers like a “no contact contract” or the threat of a lawsuit would stop down the whirling gyro of anger and then, after an appropriate period of time, the bully casually targeted the next victim in the chute, and the games began again.

The bully was, for me, a surly kid sitting in a chair. A singular I could diminish with one well-aimed punch.

Fast forward to now.

The bully at high school is a cyberspace phantasm named Rumor.  Its genesis is secrecy, anonymity. 

Who knows what sneering voodoo princess hatched that first untraceable egg a year ago?  Someone who hates the Girl’s spark, her courage, her confidence, her independence, her beauty, probably.  Someone who took her boisterous “ah, screw it” attitude personally.  Someone who wanted her love and loyalty...

But hatch it did. 

It splits like an atom over and over again dividing exponentially along razor sharp web fibers sending soul killing lies and accusations from cell phone to laptop to hissing sibilant whispers echoing in steamy cement corridors.  There is no bully to blame, no singular to bloody or restrain by law.  

The bully is a ghost.

When the electrical storm of lies abates, Girl breathes, but just a breath or two.  It comes again in waves, she knows.  It’s not stopping, not flaming out. Friends don’t battle with her, stick up for her, fearing the ignition of their own personal incineration. 

It is invincible.

It comes from the space between hell and college.

Dad Creates a Stir

  

Dad always wanted me to be a boy. 

The day I was born, my dad, by virtue of being a resident doctor at Holy Cross Hospital, was permitted to hang out with mom while she labored to bring me into the world.   Dad had privileges, unlike all the other anxious daddy-os brooding and pacing carpet ruts in the waiting room floor.   

I was way overdue and not making any signs of popping out any time soon. Reportedly, my birth was a mighty push helped along by forceps and some happy-slappy amnesia-inducing medications they wouldn’t dare use today.  But everything turned out fine.  Mom and daughter resting comfortably. 

There was one small problem, however, that provoked a ripple of concern throughout the hospital.

When, apparently against my will,  I was yanked blinking and squealing out into the open, Dr. Pat announced, “It’s a GIRL!”  

Then (and this must’ve been some Rockwell tableau) the obstetrical nurses and attending nuns gently applauded and made approving cooing noises.  All admiring eyes, welling with tears of joy, were trained on the handsome young doctor who looked like Gregory Peck, his Grace Kelly doppelganger wife and their naked fussing pink wiggly newborn daughter.

Dad took a big breath looked seriously at my woozy giggling mom, then at me, and in a moment that will live in hospital infamy, he said:

“Put it back until it grows a dangle.”

Tick. Tock.   

Then explosively my mother laughed like a crazy maniacal doped-up nut woman and flopped back on the pillows in a swoon.  Dad turned on his heel and rapidly left the labor room, never even attempting to kiss or hug mom or me, leaving the nuns and nursing staff in a stunned silence.

At Holy Cross, the underground railroad of juicy news was the staff -  Telegraph, telephone, tell-a-nurse or tell-a-nun as the case may be.  So the whisper game began quoting my father’s parting “dangle” remark, how my mom was apparently driven mad by the comment and passed out, and the tsk-tsking was escalating over what it seemed to reveal.   

The rumor travelled at light-speed from the top of the hospital to the lobby infecting every coffee room and water cooler in its path.

 “Could it be that the doctor doesn’t want his daughter?”

Now, dad and mom have wicked senses of humor.  Of course they had discussed the idea of gender and they were fine with either.  But Dad had teased mom relentlessly throughout this first pregnancy with crude faux-machismo taunts about producing a first born boy, or else. 

His punchline delivery was in that Jackie Gleason-style “trip to the moon” kind of humor which was broadcasting in glorious black and white on TVs everywhere at the time. 

He had saved up the “dangle” line as some kind of uproarious finale to his nine month (no, ten month) long comedy show.  That’s why she laughed like crazy. 

It was opus. 

Just nobody else knew that.  

Her swoon?  She was spent and sedated.

And dad’s abrupt exit?  Never much for smoochy, gooey displays of affection, he was just anxious to fulfill a promise to immediately call the grandparents on the phone outside in the hall. That’s all. 

It didn’t take long for the staff at the hospital to see that dad adored his girls and the jungle telegraph piped down almost at once after a little explaining by both my parents.

However, as with any joke, fifty-percent is goofing around and the other fifty-percent is serious.

Lois and John

Click on titles for more family stories starring Dr. Dad:

Dad Flipped a Coin for Mom and Lost

Dad Creates a Stir

Dad's Sunday Lesson or Jesus in My Stomach

Dad Builds Character

Dad's Mandatory Family Dinners
Of Mice and Dad
Of Mice and Dad:  The Tale of the Tail

Golf Course Gorts

Dad and the Purple Schwinn

And from Dr. Dad’s sister, Aunt Polly:

Georgia Justice Hostage Show: Aunt Polly’s Ordeal in Cordele