Mike was shocked. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Where they telling him the truth? Did he somehow screw up? He went looking for his brother Jack. Jack was in his room, when he saw Mike and waved him in. “Guess mom and dad talked to you about the new school. How do you feel about?”
“I don’t know, Jack. I don’t know if this is good or not. Maybe I messed up. I just don’t know.”
“Nah, Mike you didn’t mess up or anything. Let me put to you this way. Assume that you were this really great soccer player. You were so good you could start for the JV team at the high school now, you were that good. What should you do? If you stayed with your current team, you wouldn’t really get that much better. You might even get worse. Your teammates might start to resent you because you’re that much better than them. You might get discouraged and quit. Too many bad things can happen. Dude you’re like that with school. You’ve got to go where you can get challenged and grow. Won’t be easy but better than staying where you are or letting them put you in a lot higher grades. That wouldn’t be good either. Trust me on this.”
Mike looked thoughtful. “So, you think I should do this?”
“Dude, everyone thinks you should do this. You’re our brother, if we didn’t think this was right, one of us would speak up. You should trust us. You should trust mom and dad. We all make mistakes, but I don’t see this being one of them. Oh, these people won’t let you coast, which is what you’re doing now.”
Mike was touched by his brother telling him that he and his sisters had his back. “Thanks man, I’ll look at the school and probably go. Thanks for being my brother.” They hugged and Mike went downstairs to tell his parents that he’d go look at the school.
Over the weekend, Mike became more comfortable with the decision. On Monday he and his mother drove to Seton Hall. He met Dr. Morgan and was shown the school. He talked to a couple of the other kids who were near his age. They liked the school and were happy to be there. Mike thought they were nice but a little nerdy. Then he laughed to himself, he was a little nerdy too. They arranged for him to come back the next day and start taking the battery of tests. They lasted for a full two days. On Friday John and Mary meet with Dr. Morgan to go over the results.
“Well, your son should definitely be in this school. He intelligence is such that it was warranted. He’s smart enough that he would be in the upper 10% of the students here. What is most encouraging is his social skills. It’s one thing for young children to be exceptionally smart. It is quite another for them to develop more normal social skills. That’s one of the things we try and help the students here develop. For the academics, we sort of just get out of the way and the kids eat it up. They’ll just devour that stuff. Michael has obviously doing that on the sly, so to speak. He does seem to like sports. It says here that his older brother was a very good soccer player. That may well be the influence there. I would strongly urge you to keep up with the soccer. It’s good for him physically as well as providing interaction with children who are more in the mainstream intellectually. That’s very important. Your family is very outdoors oriented. I would continue to do that. The one thing I would recommend is that you consider some sort of martial arts training. That actually instills some physical confidence and more importantly teaches discipline and restraint. If you like he can start here on Monday.”
John and Mary spent some more time talking to Dr. Morgan and agreed that Mike would start school on Monday. When Monday rolled around, Mary dropped a nervous Mike off to school on his first day. He was brought to a classroom where there were 10 other children around his age. There were also three teachers assigned to the class. Mike was introduced to all his fellow students, he only got about half their names. Some seemed friendly, a couple seemed put out that somebody would interrupt them. Mike was nervous about starting a new school with people he didn’t know. Jack had told him that it was normal, and the idea was to accept it and just keep going. That’s what Mike did.
The teachers showed him what he was to work on. He quickly realized that this was going to be harder and more challenging than his previous school. He couldn’t just get straight A’s without working. In a way he really liked that. It was a challenge. He put his head down and got at. During breaks and at lunch, everyone talked about world affairs, science and books they were reading. Nobody talked about sports. Mike was really into science and he was a full participant in those discussions. When he got home, he’d look up the topics on the internet to get more information. World affairs didn’t hold any interest to him and at that point he liked to read for fun. He never could read the Great Gatsby or any number of other books. He did like mysteries and science fiction.
May, who was a young Asian girl, found out he played soccer and that he liked it. She asked him about it. Mike explained that he was on a team in a league. It was only for kids between 8 and 10. They weren’t really all that good, but they were learning the basics. He enjoyed playing with the other kids and he didn’t think about school or anything else, just playing well. May said that sounded interesting but not something she would want to do. She wanted to play tennis. She explained it all to Mike and he had the same reaction to tennis that she did to soccer.
After a few weeks, Mike took his place with his fellow students. A couple of them were weird, as he would admit, but for the most part he got along with practically all of them. One exception was Tommy. Tommy was maybe the smartest of the group and the prototypical pencil necked geek. He was rude and nasty to everyone. The school knew this and all their efforts to mitigate his behavior met with failure. His mother firmly believed that he could do no wrong and that he was reacting to other children treating him badly. Tommy often mouthed off at Mike. Mike would look up at him and tell him to go away and then get back to work. Other students became upset and there were shouting matches that the teachers had to break up.
Apparently, Tommy was upset that he couldn’t get much of rise out of Mike, so he upped his harassment. It all came to a head one day when Tommy came up to the desk Mike was working at and swept everything off it. Mike was up and at Tommy in a flash. He threw Tommy against a wall and was ready to start hitting him, when the teachers pulled them apart. One of the teachers had seen the whole thing. She couldn’t act quickly enough to stop Mike from throwing Tommy against the wall, but she did stop him from hitting Tommy. Both boys were talked to by Dr. Morgan. In a way he sympathized with Mike. None the less, he needed to make Mike understand that physical violence was a last resort and he needed to let the teachers deal with such behavior. He did notify both parents.
When Mike got home, his mother had a talk with him about dealing with difficult people like Tommy. She told him that violence was not the answer. Mike was smart enough not to argue with her and he went up to his room to sulk. He was still mad at Tommy and thought something should happen to him. Misty sensed that something was bothering Mike, so she followed him up to his room and cuddled with him. He found that petting Misty and just her being there helped him calm down
Tommy on the other hand, was different. Mrs. Rosen, Tommy’s mother marched into the school the next day and demanded to see Dr. Morgan. As soon as she was in his office, she demanded that Mike be expelled or at the very least suspended for his attack on her son. Dr. Morgan explained to her that Tommy was the one who initiated the confrontation and that the whole thing had been witnessed by a teacher. That didn’t deter Mrs. Rosen she was sure that Tommy was just reacting to a provocation from the other boy. Probably due to his jealousy of Tommy. It took a while and a lot of patience on Dr. Morgan’s part to get her to calm down. He suggested that Tommy see someone so that he could learn to handle the issues that would arise due to his superior intelligence. She agreed to have one of the counselors from the University work with Tommy. Dr. Morgan realized that the counselor had his work cut out for him. Tommy’s socialization was sorely lacking, and his mother made matters worse. He’d met Tommy’s father and that man had no intentions of disputing what his wife wanted.
The Mu
lvaney’s followed through on the school’s recommendation on martial arts. Mike was enrolled in Karate classes at a local dojo. He quickly learned that he had a long way to go before he was breaking bricks with his bare hands. He learned about discipline, breathing, mokuso or meditation as well practicing the basic forms. He learned his first kata that he practiced, and he started to meditate regularly. He found that this relieved stress and centered him. As he went on, he learned a number of katas.
After a while Mike started to get used to the school and make friends with some of the kids. Since most of the boys liked games, they often had gaming parties at different houses. This involved pizza and soda and lots of taunting about who was better at what game and the things that preteen boys got into. Mike continued to play soccer and take his martial arts classes. It got to the point that Sharon felt she could tease Mike. “Hey Mike, how was nerd school today?” she’d ask.
Mike didn’t let it get to him and gave as good as he got. “Sharon, does your boyfriend have two brain cells to rub together? I’m surprised he can find his way here and back home.”
The first year went quickly. Mike’s reading and math continued to improve dramatically. The school made sure that they were given condensed courses that covered everything that would have been covered in primary school and later they would do the same for secondary school subjects. The idea of the school was to give students the ability to move at their own pace, which was much faster than normal and do it in an environment where they were interacting with children in their age group. It wasn’t perfect but it was the best that they could do.
During the summer Mike had book assignments. But he had plenty of time to do other things. He attended a soccer camp for kids his age. He spent time up at his Uncle Sol and Aunt June’s place near lake George and weekends and longer down the shore. All in all, it was a good break from the academics that consumed the rest of his year. John and Mary worried that maybe they should have sent him to computer camp or something like that, but they both agreed that they were simply trying to be to perfect.
When he was 12, Jack and Julie both graduated from college. Jack who had gone to Penn on an NROTC scholarship, was commissioned an Ensign and was scheduled to go to Pensacola for flight training. Mike thought that was totally cool. Julie graduated from Columbia pre-med and was going to start Medical School at Columbia. She wanted to be a radiologist and it had a good program. Sharon was just starting Rutgers. Her goal was to be an occupational therapist. His father made a very good salary and had been saving for the expected costs of college. Jack’s scholarship had helped alleviate the strain on that savings.
That was also the time that puberty really hit Mike. His hormones started going wild. Luckily, he didn’t get a bad case of acne, but he started to sleep a lot more as his body changed. One day his father gave him the ‘talk’. While John, went over the birds and the bees, he did caution Mike about sex. “Mike, right now your body is telling you that you should get ready to mate. Things are different in the modern world, people live longer and get married later. I suspect that you aren’t going to have an opportunity to have sex for a while yet. One thing to remember is that teenage girls can get pregnant very easily. That would mess up both of your lives, so a word to the wise.”
Mike found the biology lesson to be less than satisfactory. That’s when his sister Sharon came to the rescue. One day she and Mike were sitting in the living room and Sharon looked at him. “So, you’re going through puberty huh, that sucks.”
Mike looked at his sister “So it’s not just me, it sucks for everybody?”
“Yeah Mike, as far as I can tell it sucks for everybody. We all go through it. I’m not sure that girls don’t have it worse than boys though.”
“How can that be, all the guys want a girl.”
“Well first of all we get our monthly cycles, you know about those right?” Mike nodded and Sharon went on. “When they first started, I ran to mom crying. Mom I’m bleeding, something is really wrong with me. I’d forgotten what she’d told me about. In fact, never really thought about. That was dumb, I had an older sister.”
They both chuckled and Mike asked. “So, I get that can be a pain in the ass, but what else makes it worse for girls?”
“Well you start getting tits and ass. Then you worry. Are my boobs to small, are they to big? Is my ass Ok? Do I look good? Girls can be a bundle of those issues.”
“I don’t understand it, but you’re pretty good looking. You’ve had plenty of boyfriends. Though I think you need an upgrade in that area. I doubt I’ll have a girlfriend for years.”
“Thank you, you may be right on boyfrieds. Now that I’m going to college, I’ve got to up my game on the boyfriend front. I’m counting on you to let me know about that. You haven’t held back on any of them so far. But even I worry about how I look; I think it’s the nature of girls.”
They both laughed. “Deal. What about girlfriends?”
“Your right, Jack didn’t have a girlfriend until the end of his junior year in high school and he was a Jock and pretty good looking. You’ll do Ok once you get older. Girls want to go out with guys who are older. But if you keep your eyes open, you’ll notice girls always wanting to talk with you. That means that they are interested. But you’ve got some time to go yet.”
At the time Jack and Julie graduated, Mike was already taking college level courses in Math and acing them. It was expected that he would start college at 14. He had to complete some regular high school classes and be emotionally ready to leave the school and start college. Mike knew full well that he wasn’t going to go to college and live in a dorm. He’d be a commuter. That would give him a bit of a refuge from the stress of being the youngest by a good deal in his class. Luckily there were a number of very good schools in commuting distance from Montclair. He had to start thinking about what he wanted to study. What he didn’t consider, but his parents did, would his college math courses be transferable? While, they wondered about that it couldn’t be more than a tiebreaker between two schools.
When Mike turned 14, that was going to be his last year in the special school. He’d have to go to college. The family had two things to celebrate. Mike’s graduation and Jack getting his wings. Jack was sky high because he not only got his wings, but he got to go for FA-18 training. He was going to be a fighter pilot. Mike was very impressed with his older brother and told all his classmates that his brother was going to be a fighter pilot. Some of his classmates thought that was totally cool. Others, like Tommy weren’t impressed. Mike didn’t care.
Mike discovers the outdoors
John Mulvaney’s family were fervent outdoors people. They liked to hike, backpack, camp, fish and hunt. Mary Mulvaney’s family was not like that. She did like hiking, but her idea of camping was a nice lodge or hotel. John’s brother-in-law, Sol Rosenberg, liked the same things that John did. Which as he said wasn’t very Jewish, but what the heck. The children followed in their parent’s footsteps. The girls went along with their mother. Although when younger they enjoyed catching bluegills. Jack followed his father and as he grew up Mike followed his older brother and father.
It started off simply. Hiking and getting use to the woods. They stared hiking primarily at South Mountain near their home in Montclair. Then it was camping out of the back of his father’s truck. At first, Mike wasn’t so sure about this. But he followed along with his older brother and father. Then he really started to like it. Until he was twelve or, so he wasn’t really strong enough to backpack and his father was very careful about firearms and hunting.
Fishing came a lot easier. The family had a place down the Jersey Shores in Lavallette. Lavallette was a typical shore community on Long Branch Island. Their house was only a block from the ocean. During the summer, the family spent a lot of time in their beach house. Mike’s father would take New Jersey Transit to Toms River and there his wife Mary would pick him up. Mike enjoyed the beach. June was just too cold to swim, but by mid-July the water had warme
d up enough to allow him to get in. He’d taken swimming lessons and from an early age and was a competent swimmer. Though he did have to be careful about the surf getting the better of him.
His first experience fishing was when his father and brother took him crabbing in the bay. They bought some fish heads from the fish monger and walked down to the bay at Hawkins Park. They carried a large 10-gallon bucket and a net on a long pole. At the bay, they filled the bucket with water. John tied a string through the fish head, a two-ounce sinker also went on the line about a foot from the fish head. Then line was tied the end off to one of the pilings on the low wall along the bay. That’s was Mike’s line. John and Jack then did their own. They sat on the edge of the wall, their feet dangling over the water. Every few minutes Mike jumped up to check his line. The first time he saw a couple of crabs on the fish head, he got so excited he nearly fell in the water.
“Pull it in slowly, Mike.” Advised his brother Jack.
Mike did just that. And as fish head got close the pier, Jack put the net underneath it and scooped the crabs up. They got shaken into the bucket and they let the fish head go. Using a heavy glove, Mike’s father, picked them up and measured them. Of the two crabs, one was a keeper. The other went back into the bay ‘to grow bigger’. This experience had an immediate effect on young Mike. The crabbing was great. That day they didn’t get enough crabs to eat, so they dumped the crabs back into the water.
His father promised him that next weekend they’d go and get enough crabs to have a cookout with corn. That Saturday morning, they went to the supermarket and got a package of 20 chicken backs. Those they left out on the counter. They also stopped off at the bait store and bought two dozen two-ounce sinkers. This time they got ready at home. The three of them, Mike, Jack and their father sat in the backyard and assembled the lines. The line was threaded through the chicken back using a very large needle and then tied off. The sinker was attached to a smaller piece of line which was then attached to the main line. His father and Jack made up the lines. Mike’s job was to carefully put the lines in one of the two 10-gallon buckets they had.
Through the Gate: The Chronicles of Cornu Book 1 Page 8
