Here I Thought I Was Normal: Micro Memoirs of Mischief

by Mr. Frank Rocco Satullo

  Another man stopped his truck next to me on the street to ask to get added back to the route. He must have noticed I was a new carrier. He had a reputation like the old man that was just fired from my route, according to others in the neighborhood. Part of the paperboy’s job was to prospect for new subscribers. This guy was nice to me so I added a customer. He was always friendly and paid on time.

  A strange family with two boys, one a year older than I and the other two or three years older, were on my route. The reason I call them strange is when I came collecting one day, their parents invited me inside. They all gathered around and treated me kindly as if I were company they were expecting. They even treated me to Rocky Road candy. The mom made it sound like she made it special for me since my name was Rocky. I didn’t want to be rude so I ate it and they watched. None of them had any. I felt very uncomfortable. As I sat on the couch, it seemed they didn’t want me to leave. I entertained the possibility that I might have been poisoned so they could abduct me or do something to me. So, I eyed up the window. I would lunge my body through it if they closed in on me. Later, I laughed it off as me being paranoid. The next day, the oldest boy walked down the driveway as I walked up with the newspaper. He smiled and slammed a fist smack in the middle of my face. I stood, stunned, as he ordered me to never step one foot in his yard again.

  Then there were the really kind people – sometimes, too kind. One was a high school girl, very pretty. She invited me in, kissed me long and hard and then smiled and disappeared into the back of the house. I stood, silent and awestruck for the longest time. She didn’t return so I left.

  Another joyous occasion was when a fairly attractive single woman answered the door in a towel when I was collecting. The towel dropped as she fetched her purse and I got an eyeful. She didn’t look one bit embarrassed and merely said, “Oops,” rewrapped herself and paid me, smiling. I was smiling, too.

  When I had a doctor’s appointment, my mom would type up a note that we stapled to the front of every paper the day before explaining why the newspaper would be an hour late the next day. The two former paper boys thought I was showing them up, I guess, because they threatened to kick my butt if I did it again. I did it again but they didn’t seem to notice.

  The scariest encounter I ever had was while I delivered the paper to a trucker’s house. I came to the porch to put the paper between the doors and he flung it open in my face as if he had been waiting all afternoon for me to show up. He was livid to say the least, convinced that I had stolen thousands of dollars’ worth of tools from his garage. I really thought he might kill me right there in broad daylight. He was not going to let me go until I admitted my crime. But I had no crime to admit. He said the only person who could possibly know what was in his garage was the paperboy. I think it was because the paperboy would be the only possible person to get close enough to the garage to get a peek inside. I wondered about the two brothers who had the route before me. Somehow, after a long interrogation, he must have wondered, too.

  My biggest mistake while having this paper route was not remembering a customer telling me that he was going on vacation and needed the paper stopped while he was gone. I simply forgot by the time I finished my route that day. After stuffing nearly a week of newspapers between his front storm and screen doors, I planned to call my supervisor to see what I should do if the papers kept piling up. It was to the point that I had to be super quick – open the screen door, flip a paper inside and shut it before all of them poured out. As I approached the house, I noticed a car in the driveway. I was relieved. When I walked up, I was met by a very unhappy customer. He said for me to come back with my mom or dad. When we returned, he held a contained anger while he lectured me on how the papers piling up had advertised nobody was home and that his house could have been robbed. In the end, he forgave me.

  All and all, the paper route was a great experience in so many ways. I made a habit of reading the front page stories on a daily basis while walking my route. One day, some kids had news before me. They ran by yelling, “The President was shot – the President was shot …”

  It Better Be Broken!

  Fall meant football and we played the game with gusto; no helmets, no pads, full contact! Sometimes, we’d send someone home early – or worse.

  It was easy to gather a bunch of kids in our neighborhood to play a game at the school lot. Green grass turned to brown soup before long. There was pride in coming home covered in mud from head to toe and told to strip to your shorts before entering the house.

  Many injuries happened throughout those years. Heck, someone got hurt every game or so it seemed. About once a year, someone got to sport a cast as a result of a lick they took.

  One day, an older kid and his buddies decided to play with us. They were two, maybe three years our senior. It didn’t matter because that’s just what happened in our neighborhood. Besides, we had mixed teams. It wasn’t like it was us against them. But one guy was a bulldozer. Nobody could bring him down unless it was a gang tackle. I decided that would stop.

  I flew out into the flat to greet him on a screen pass. As soon as he caught the ball our bodies slammed together. You could feel bone on bone. I wrapped him up and refused to let go. It slowed him enough for reinforcements to arrive. The pile moved and then tipped. Somewhere in the entanglement of bodies, my arm twisted and we all heard the familiar sound of a “branch” snapping in two.

  We peeled off the pack one by one to pan the crowd for the face that rang out pain. All eyes were on me.

  “Rock, you better get that checked out.”

  “Na, it’ll be all right,” I said.

  My skin wasn’t ruptured, no bone was showing, my arm seemed straight. I figured it was a sprain and I could shake it off.

  Two plays later, I was on my bike, riding left-handed, cradling my right arm. Every crack in the sidewalk shot sharp pain straight to my forearm. The ride was sheer agony. What made it worse was knowing that the pain was coming over and over, but I had no choice but to keep riding. The street was too busy so I had to stay the course on the sidewalk.

  This was Saturday afternoon. Dad worked most Saturday mornings and sometimes took a nap when he got home. My timing was perfect. Dad’s door was closed but the pain was enough to roust him.

  A groggy voice spoke through the closed door, “You’ll be all right. Wait ‘til your mother gets home.”

  I sat on the couch and waited for what seemed like an eternity.

  Mom came home but was in the middle of a list of things that HAD to get done.

  “What? Broken. I don’t think so,” she was in denial.

  She wasn’t convinced it was broken but we were headed to the hospital anyway. On the way, she muttered under her breath. I could tell she was upset with the turn in her day. She really thought I had only sprained my arm so going to the hospital was a waste of time.

  Finally, she looked over at me, frustrated, and deadpanned, “It better be broken.”

  As we waited for results, I kept repeating in my head, “Please be broken, please be broken, please be broken.”

  It was! Clean through. And another bone had a large chip in it.

  Whew!

  Caddy Days

  I was called into the principal’s office at my middle school to be told that I was too young to work, according to child labor laws. So, I had to quit my job as a caddy at a nearby country club. Instead, I rode my bike twice the distance to caddy at a different country club across the county line – at least until school let out for summer vacation. Then, I returned to the closer place, which was still a long bike ride.

  As I left Avon Lake on a country road, over the railroad tracks, I pedaled as fast as I could down the slope on the other side. I had to gain enough speed to coast by an old farmhouse with my feet up by my handlebars. There he was, barking and running right into the road, nipping at my empty pedals. No sooner than he gave up the chase did my momentum slow enough to force my feet back to the pedals. It was always a
close call.

  At the caddy shack, the caddy master called me over to a foursome ready for a loop. There was snickering behind the first tee. Later, I heard that someone had intentionally matched a preacher with a foul-mouth. Not until the third hole did the foul-mouth know he was in the company of a man of the cloth. That’s when everyone except the foul-mouth burst into laughter. Soon, more cursing drowned out the laughter. Later, I heard people say they could even hear the laughter and cursing all the way back at the clubhouse.

  My golfer was on the quiet side compared to the others. I didn’t know if he was new, subordinate or just quiet by nature. He was a stroke or two in last. I handed him a wedge for a chip shot out of the sand trap. He got a hold of that thing and it screamed out of there so fast and hard that I thought I might have to yell, “Fore!”

  It ricocheted off an oak branch overhead abruptly sending it into the flag of the pin where it fell straight down into the cup. It happened in the blink of an eye. I had never seen anything like it so I broke character and roared in delight. It was a fantastic shot in my mind. When I caught the facial expression of my golfer, I was puzzled because he looked downright embarrassed.

  I asked him, off to the side, “Wasn’t that incredible?”

  He gave me half a smile on the sly, tasseled my hair and walked to the next tee. Later, he tipped me the most I ever got that summer.

  After my morning round, I decided to hang out for some caddy baseball and try to get a second loop after lunch. One of the caddies in this group was just plain tough as nails. He was older than I and from the inner city. His golfer was one of those who had to insult people to act like a big shot, and he demeaned his caddies.

  Nobody wanted to caddy for him but inner city caddy said, “I don’t give a shit, a loop’s a loop.”

  It was a scorcher of an afternoon so we rolled up our short sleeves to try and fade out the infamous caddy-tan lines on our arms. Inner city caddy was sporting homemade tattoos.

  His golfer insisted he keep his sleeves down, “A little more class here, boy.”

  I saw inner city caddy drop a mouthful of spit into the guy’s golf bag when nobody else was looking. He took a lot more abuse than I figured he could stand. I began to think he must really need to make a buck. He sucked it up, rebelled a little behind the scenes and marched on like a real trooper.

  It was somewhere along the back nine that fate and justice crossed paths.

  The big-shot golfer sliced a shot off the fairway into a tree. You could see the ball fall down but not out. It rested on a branch about 15-feet-high. The golfer out cursed the morning foul-mouth. During his tirade, he spun around and released his iron. The golf club flung round and round, landing in a pond.

  “Get my club! Then, get my ball!” he said to the inner city kid.

  To his credit, the kid casually walked to the pond, never uttering a word. Then, he turned and waited for the golfer to look.

  “Come on, come on, we don’t have all day,” the golfer said for the kid to hear.

  That wasn’t all that he said. When he turned toward his friends, under his breath, he added something about that kind being lazy. His friends didn’t look at him. They looked past him and nodded that he better look for himself, too.

  The kid was standing with the entire golf bag, and all of its very expensive contents, over his head.

  “What the …”

  Before the big shot could finish his sentence, the kid spun around much like the golfer did before he launched his club. Only this time, it was the kid launching the entire bag …deep into the pond. Then, he turned, flashed two flagrant middle fingers and walked off into the sun, never to be seen again.

  The Lady in the Bathtub

  My parents moved in and shortly thereafter one of their next door neighbors told my dad a disturbing story about my parents’ house – a lady died in the bathtub. According to this neighbor’s story, the lady’s husband called him over as soon as he found her dead. This neighbor went on to tell of some suspicious circumstances later recounted by another neighbor.

  About this same time, one of the young daughters from the other next door neighbor joined my mom on the front steps and said, “A lady drowned in your bathtub."

  Later in the day, the girl’s mother found out about her daughter’s loose lips, got upset, apologized and then filled in the details.

  The stories basically told to my parents were that this lady was widely assumed to have had a drinking problem. On the day in question, she was apparently taking a bath. Her husband was in the next room. After her death, the body was soon cremated and he remarried just a few months later. So, it makes for a suspicious story. Was she drunk and someone held her under? A whiskey bottle was supposedly next to the tub. One neighbor called it straight up murder.

  Whether any of the details are true, we don’t know for sure but what we do know for sure is that a lady died in the bathtub we used. Suffice it to say, this grisly fact was not disclosed by the Realtor.

  At the time, our house had only one full bathroom so we HAD to take showers in the “death tub.” Needless to say, my sister and I skipped a few cleanings. And when we did have to shower, we’d have the other stand in the hallway, outside the closed door listening for any yells for help. I used to burn my eyes regularly when they should have been closed more tightly while shampooing. I’d feel a hand on my head pushing me under the water and realize it was my own. I used to shower in less than two minutes flat for at least a year after being told this horrific story.

  Of course, we shared the story with friends who would sleep-over. All of them would nearly tumble, rushing out of the bathroom after they had to use it, looking over their shoulder to see if “The Lady in the Bathtub” was following.

  I was a few years older than my sister. One of her friends suggested they play a little game called “Bloody Mary.” They dared me and I accepted. How could I not?

  Our bathroom was so dark when you pulled the door closed and turned off the lights, it was black as black could be. You truly couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. It wasn’t a large bathroom. You could walk in and the towel rack, sink and toilet were to the left and the bath tub to the right. When you looked into the mirror, the bathtub reflected in it.

  I stood facing the mirror in the pitch black chanting for the girls outside to hear. I had to say “Bloody Mary” 50 times out loud, staring into the mirror. I couldn’t even see my own face it was so dark. At some point, I was supposed to come face-to-face with “Bloody Mary,” but there was a whole different level of terror running through my veins. I expected to see the reflection of “The Lady in the Bathtub” appear from over my shoulder, reaching out from the bathtub to grab me and pull me in to sure death by drowning. I said “Bloody Mary” for the 17th time and rushed out to safety unable to be in that room a split second longer.

  Everyone laughed but it’s a record that was never broken!

  If Looks Could Kill

  If the four of us didn’t affirm what just happened, I wouldn’t have believed my own eyes and ears.

  We were traveling cross country in the family van. Up early to put some pavement between us and our last stop, we grew hungry – really hungry – so Dad decided we would find a restaurant to enjoy a nice breakfast. It was Sunday around the time church let out and people flocked to town eateries.

  We parked. I had a skip in my step, excited at the thought of the whopping stack of pancakes I was going to order. We passed the front windows of the restaurant. It was full of people. We could hear the chattering of voices and clanking of silverware.

  A young lady met us at the door and immediately led us to a table, not a booth, in the middle of the restaurant. As we walked to our table, the place grew quieter and quieter. We sat and were told the waitress would be with us in a moment.

  It was a long moment.

  In that time, the four of us grew quiet as well. It felt like people were staring at us. I looked around. They were. If a fork fell to a plate no
w, the noise would pierce the deafening silence. My eyes searched for comfort and protection. They locked on Mom and Dads’ as did my sister’s. They had a blank gaze.

  The waitress still didn’t come. The full restaurant still didn’t make a sound. Nobody so much as ate. They just watched us in silence. My heart raced. My skin crawled.

  “Leave – Now,” Dad said under his breath but we all heard it loud and clear.

  Dad got up and so did we. All of our heads were down as we whisked out the door.

  When we hit the sidewalk along the front windows, the inside of the restaurant sounded as it had on approach. Voices chattered in conversation, dishes clanked and all was normal.