Here I Thought I Was Normal: Micro Memoirs of Mischief

by Mr. Frank Rocco Satullo

  The next day, it was warm outside. The snow melted quickly. We all left for the weekend – thank goodness!

  I was the first to return. My girlfriend, Becky, was with me. She noticed something was wrong with our two parakeets. Both were at the bottom of the cage, dying. We took them out and held them, wondering what could be wrong. Becky said to call my dad. Whenever I needed answers, my dad was the go-to guy.

  “You have a gas leak. Get out of the house,” he said immediately. “Give the birds fresh air and call the gas company.”

  Becky and I turned off the thermostat, opened windows and we went outside with the birds and cordless phone.

  The gas company sent a man within the hour and he said we had major leaks in and outside of the house. The landlord had to be called to approve the emergency repairs. Meanwhile, with the gas off and windows open, it was safe to reenter the house. The birds weren’t getting any better. In fact, one died and the other seemed like it was suffering a lot.

  I called Dad again.

  “Honestly, Rocky, if it’s suffering that bad, you might want to consider helping it along.”

  “What do you mean, Dad?”

  He explained that when a pet is suffering, sometimes it’s better to take it to the vet to be euthanized. We all knew I wasn’t taking the parakeet to the vet so he suggested I fill up the sink, hold it under and it would be for the best.

  I got off the phone and urged the bird to get better. It got worse. It was difficult to watch. Then, I urged it to die quickly. It didn’t listen. It just made noises and scratched in a circle in the corner of the cage. So, I filled up the sink.

  It only took a matter of seconds but every second seemed like a minute to me. The little bird squirmed in my palm. I decided that I couldn’t go through with it, but just as I was going to pull it up it gave a hard thrash and was motionless.

  Jerry came home during this time. He walked inside the front door, which had a direct line of sight through the front room, dining room and into the kitchen. I had turned to see him walking toward me just as my hand was feeling the thrash of my bird. He knew something was awry. My eyes probably gave it away.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, passing by me.

  “Drowning a bird.”

  “Ya, right.” He knew that couldn’t be true.

  I held up the wet, limp bird.

  Graffiti

  When all of our housemates set out for an afternoon at the local pool hall, two of us had to remain behind to study and complete schoolwork.

  When we finally finished, we found ourselves with spare time to just chill out in the living room. We were sipping coffee.

  Jerry leaned over, set his mug on a table and said, “I’m curious.”

  Jerry was destined to become “Mr. Real Estate.” He already had a license. He knew a lot about houses and just had a suspicion about this one we were living in. He moved a chair and carefully peeled back the hideous puke green carpet.

  “Oh my, check this out,” he said.

  He pulled the corner of the carpet up so I could appreciate the old wood floor below. It was better looking than many modern wood floors. It still had a shine to it as if the carpeting had preserved it for decades, which was how old the shabby carpeting looked.

  “Let’s tear this up and show off this wood!” he said, growing excited.

  We called the landlord and he actually stopped by to see what we were talking about.

  “If you guys do the labor and pull up all the staples and what not, cut, roll and tie the carpet for haul away, you can have at it,” he said.

  The landlord left and we went to work. But before we tore out the carpet we had other ideas. We grabbed a trash bag full of beer empties from a party we had over the weekend and scattered them everywhere in the living room and dining room. It was one of those older homes where both rooms connected into what was really just one giant spread. Each of our bedrooms connected to these rooms off to the side. Then, we moved the furniture a bit and tossed things around like a real ruckus took place.

  We were ready for the masterpiece – the practical joke of the year.

  In the garage we found spray paint and house paint, the kind you brush on thick and wide. We came back inside and made a careful mess. We were careful not to ruin the walls or furniture but we went nuts on that old carpeting. We knew we could destroy it but our roommates out drinking had no clue.

  So, we tried our hands at graffiti and added a touch of profanity at the end of arrows pointing to different bedroom doors. It was stuff like “Ron gives …” or “Mark is a …” or “Tim sucks …” We didn’t hold back. It was bold. It was bad. We laughed hard, trying to out-do one another. We painted awful pictures and sayings in a rainbow of colors splattered EVERYWHERE!

  “Here they come!”

  We started to fake fight and shouted obscenities at each other. Our three roommates walked in the front door thinking stress got the better of us. They were in a great mood after spending so much time shooting pool. One by one they entered and their jaws hit the floor.

  “Whaaaat did youuuu dooooo?” said roomy one.

  “Holy crap, we’re dead!” said roomy two.

  “YOU SUNNAVA BITCHES! YER PAYING FOR THIS,” shouted roomy three.

  And they sprang across the room and proceeded to kick the shit out of us for real! The problem was we felt no pain we were laughing so damn hard.

  Minutes later, we were still trying to force words through our laughter. Eventually, we hit the point that we actually felt the beating and thus did a better job of communicating.

  The walloping slowed and our roomies listened, “What?”

  Once they realized the hoax, we all collapsed on couches, exhausted, and scanned the masterpiece we had created.

  “You sons-a-bitches.”

  Bounced

  The bar was just around the corner from our college home. For a long time, it was our secret watering hole, away from the usual sardine cans. That was before we showed other friends and they showed friends and so on until it was the newest coolest place to hang. And it had a pool table.

  We had been going there for so long that Zeke – the owner – knew us pretty well. He was a big man. Zeke asked if I wanted to make some extra money checking IDs on weekends. It sounded good to me.

  My first night on the job, it was quiet enough I could shoot pool by the back (main) door. I was a streaky pool player. Some nights I was the cut master and could run a table or close to it. Other nights I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. I grew up with a pool table and played Dad often so you’d think I’d be more consistent but I wasn’t. On this evening, I could do no wrong. And my opponents, part of the new crowd that thought they owned the place, didn’t like me taking their money.

  The place got crowded fast so I had one eye on the door, having to check IDs, and one eye on the cue ball. I lost my edge and lost the game. Boy did those guys let me know it too. Later in the night, the place was a sardine can and Zeke said not to let anyone else in.

  Suddenly, I was a bouncer. I didn’t look like a bouncer and surely didn’t feel like one. Two guys walked up and I had to hold them back with an extended arm when they didn’t think I was serious when I said they couldn’t come in until two people left. They were not pleased and they stood there glaring at me. Then, the two guys I was shooting pool with earlier came up and asked what the problem was. All four of these guys pegged me as enemy #1. The two that hated me from shooting pool earlier mouthed off to me. One gave me a tough guy nudge so I slammed him into the pool table. The pool players were upset now too.

  Zeke appeared next to me and nobody messed with Zeke. The guy I shoved was long gone. The other guy pleaded his case to Zeke.

  Zeke said, “Not inside,” and threw me to the wolves.

  As anger flooded my veins, I walked out with a head of steam thinking I could take this dude no problem. But there was a problem.

  The two guys I wouldn’t let in were hanging back in the short hall
way between doors out back. I barely paid attention as I whisked by to get outside and take care of business. Hell, I figured people would pour out to watch the fight. Little did I know, Zeke shut the door after my original opponent followed me outside and didn’t let anyone else pass.

  When I wheeled around, there were three guys in front of me when I expected one. I instantly knew my ass was grass. In the blink of an eye I decided I was only going to get in one punch so I would have to make it a good one. I hit the biggest guy with an uppercut to the chin and then it was lights out …for me.

  I had never been beaten so badly and I had never seen anyone beaten so badly. They were relentless. The blows came from all three and from all directions. They hit me with fists, elbows, feet and knees. When the flurry finally ended, I was all the way across a four lane road in a gravel lot, face down in a mud puddle, choking on my own blood-mud-water cocktail. I looked up and the guy who was supposed to be my only opponent was standing over me with a large chunk of broken concrete in his hand, held high over his head.

  “Dooon’t do thaaat,” I forced softly from my lips. It was all I could say.

  The only thing between me and my skull being crushed in was my pathetic raised hand and pleading eyes. He dropped the chunk of concrete and walked away.

  I struggled to my feet and limp-walked across the street to the edge of the parking lot. At the far end were two of the guys ready to head back into the bar but the one I punched walked “with” me, jawing up a storm.

  “Not so tough now. Some bouncer!” He went on and on.

  When I saw the other two call out before going through the door, it was a 50-50 decision as to whether or not I should go after this asshole since it would be a one-on-one fight. Adrenaline surged through me. I decided if he didn’t hit me, I would keep walking. Once I entered the darkness beyond the parking lot lights, he went his separate way.

  I managed to pass my dark house and get halfway down the street to where my girlfriend, Becky, lived. The expressions on her and her roommates’ faces scared the hell out of me. One of the roommates’ boyfriends was there. They carried me upstairs, filled a tub of water, and set me in it. I had head-to-toe open wounds and gravel embedded way under my skin, everywhere it seemed. I barely remained conscious as they took care of me. I didn’t have medical insurance so this treatment was going to have to do. Fortunately, I had no broken bones. It was hard to fathom but I didn’t. My overall numbness subsided enough that I could feel my caretakers digging into my scalp, elbows, shoulders and knees to remove fine gravel and dirt. Eventually I was cleaned and patched up, but it took hours. I was embarrassed to have to be cared for like that. On the other hand, I did feel like I was scratching at death’s door so I let humility wash over me in waves.

  Not long afterward, “recovered,” I went with Becky to her extended family Thanksgiving. Her dad’s side of the family had yet to meet me. They had heard about me but nobody forewarned them about my “new look.” I walked in still sporting black eyes (one was a real nice shiner) and some raw cuts above the neck that weren’t yet healed.

  My wife’s adult cousins, two guys, instantly warmed up to me. The rest, I’m not so sure.

  A month later, I asked Becky to marry me.

  Extra Extra

  We lived off campus at the wrong end of town. You couldn’t have a pizza delivered because someone shot a driver.

  My roommates weren’t home on this night. My bedroom window overlooked the front porch. In the early morning when it was pitch black outside, I awoke to a noise. I lay still and listened for it again. Someone was on the porch.

  I shook my fiancé, Becky, awake.

  “It sounds like they’re trying to get in,” she said, sitting up straight.

  I grabbed a dusty bowie knife I had stashed just for such an occasion. Damn if they weren’t trying to break in. Fear ripped through my body. I ripped up the blinds, streetlight highlighting my shirtless torso.

  Brandishing this blade overhead, I shouted, “You better get the %#@*&%! off my porch you %#@*&%^$%!”

  Before I could finish, there were two heavy thuds, a quick pitter-patter of feet, car doors slamming and the sound of burning rubber.

  We went onto the porch to find stacks and stacks and stacks of the Sunday edition of the Toledo newspaper.

  A few hours later, I was sipping coffee, reading one of my hundred or so newspapers when the guy next door walked around his yard, searching for something, with a puzzled look.

  “If you’re looking for newspapers to deliver, they put ‘em on my porch by mistake,” I said.

  He was relieved.

  As we loaded his car, I said, “You might be a little short today.”

  Dyslexia

  I never seemed to grasp speaking in a foreign tongue. I’d spend three times as long as anyone else studying Spanish in college before dropping the course. I also dropped it in high school. Now, I had no choice. My major in college required four quarters of a foreign language class. These weren’t three or four credit hour courses, they were five credit hours each, 20 total. My hopes for my grade point average hung in the balance.

  Imagine my delight when I learned that the Latin course only required reading and writing, not speaking. That sounded easier. It was a dead language and I was alive with confidence.

  During my first quarter I did very well – all things considered. The second quarter, I was very average.

  I decided to take the third quarter over summer when the quarter was condensed. Quickly, I fell behind in my studies. After doing poorly on the first exam, I noticed something and put my newly discovered observation to the test. The professor would pick a part of a story for us to translate. It was no small task but I memorized the story word for word. During the test, I merely needed to identify a trigger word or phrase at the beginning and end of the passage he chose to give us for translation. From there, I just wrote from memory.

  It worked.

  I spent the rest of the quarter getting pretty decent scores. On one paper, a trigger phrase appeared twice so I gave an extra paragraph by accident.

  The professor wrote a comment back, “You must have really enjoyed this one to go beyond what the test required.”

  Whew. I only had one more quarter of Latin to go. But there was one problem. It was like going straight from Latin II to Latin IV.

  On the first day of class in my final quarter of college, provided I passed Latin, the teacher said words he’d regret, “As long as you actively participate on a consistent basis in this class, you will get at least a C.”

  This class met Monday through Friday, one hour per day, five days per week. And day after day, I humiliated myself by raising my hand to volunteer to answer a question. I would ALWAYS get the answer wrong. Sometimes, I could see the facial expressions from students around me wondering what my deal was. It was grueling to voluntarily subject myself to such repeated embarrassment but there was no alternative. I couldn’t learn Latin III overnight. This was the only card I had to play and I was playing it to the “T” hoping my professor was good for his word.

  He was a young teacher. And he was about to learn a lesson.

  After the final exam, I called to ask for a meeting with him. In his office, I reminded him of his promise. Right away he backed away from it. But I persisted. And I persisted. I reminded him of my DAILY participation, which more than defined consistent.

  He was backed into a corner and then he tried for an out that I badly wanted to give him.

  “Do you suffer from dyslexia?”

  I thought about it for a second that dragged on like a year. I couldn’t risk being caught in a lie and jeopardize all that I had worked for. I had to play my cards, not his.

  “No.”

  When I got my report card, I had earned the grade C-minus. Technically, I’m not sure that’s a “C” but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  And that’s how I got a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations.

  CHAPTER 5:


  A RESPONSIBLE FAMILY MAN – SORT OF

  Blowup Doll

  I had been working 70 hours per week for nearly two months straight doing everything possible to make sure our national sales conference went off without a hitch.

  We were in Chicago for the conference.

  Now, I didn’t really know what to do when one of our senior officers asked a favor of me.

  “I want to be clear that you don’t need to do this for me,” he prefaced the request.