Here I Thought I Was Normal: Micro Memoirs of Mischief

by Mr. Frank Rocco Satullo

  Stepping out back, Mike and I drank beer a little faster than we had in a long time. That’s when “Mr. Buff” appeared. Buff had a chiseled …everything. I tried to stick out my chest but realized it was left behind in Germany when I was in the Army years ago. Either that or the good life had grown my stomach.

  Anyway, Mr. Buff said, “We were talking over there and decided, ya know what? Let’s give these old-dudes our cell phone number so if they need us to pump down the volume, we’ll know.”

  I was puzzled and looked around for these old dudes. It was like a truck hit me when I realized Buff was referring to us! He was so nice though, in that fake, but believing he was sincere, kind of way.

  I kept having visions of us being in the middle of one of those insurance commercials – “LIFE! It Comes At You Fast!”

  Well, inside the cabin, all things were quiet – proof that miracles do exist.

  The next day, we did some sightseeing, ate lunch at a nice place and then someone suggested we go antiquing.

  Although I wanted to, something inside me screamed, “Noooo!”

  So after we spent two hours in the antique mall, we went to the lodge, swam, played games and had a fine time. On the way out, we stopped at the front desk and said we hoped there would be patrols to keep the college kids at bay, but that there were no complaints at this time.

  We drove back to “cul-de-sac Ft. Lauderdale” to see nearly every rooftop shingled with girls in bikinis and guys with no shirts. Below, there was a wiffle-ball game going on at the end of the cul-de-sac. Our kids asked if they could play too. Yeah right.

  At dusk, I had to take some trash to a nearby dumpster. There were raccoons. Yippee! So I got the kids, walked back and showed them “wildlife.” After the little scavengers entertained us, it grew darker so we headed back to the cabin.

  Fortunately, only I saw the streaking from afar. At least this night, the party was at the cabin across the street instead of next door. Things were definitely getting wilder.

  In the morning, we decided we’d had enough. After packing the van I had to make another walk to the dumpster. On my way back, I was startled to see a family of four emerge from a cabin kitty-corner from ours and next door to last night’s party.

  Here’s their story:

  “In the middle of the night, my worst fear came true,” said kitty-corner dad. “Someone was banging on the back door yelling, let me in. I yelled back, You better get out of here, this isn’t your cabin, now go away. To which the drunk on the other side pleaded, Come on dude, stop mess’n with my head and just let me in. This repeated a few times before the stranger at the door fell silent.”

  And so it goes.

  I could tell us “old dudes” had a new story to tell.

  Going Postal

  I was suited with a heart-vest to monitor my ticker for 24 hours. Little plastic cups and wires were suctioned and taped all over my torso. I hated it.

  As the doctor directed, I proceeded with my normal routine, except, this would be an abnormal day. The kids had a day off school yet I still needed to work, albeit from my home office. I was uncomfortable and very conscious of the Frankenstein concoction rubbing under my loosely fitted shirt. I was sensitive.

  My pre-school son was in a stage where he’d run up and slam into me, sometimes wrapping his arms and legs around me. Already irritable, this aggravated me more. I was afraid he’d rip a wire off and then what? Start another 24-hour period from scratch I assumed.

  “Stop it!”

  An hour later, “Stop it, I mean it this time!”

  Thirty more minutes go by, “I SAID STOP IT, OR-OR-I’LL TAKE YOUR TOYS AWAY.”

  Finally, I just needed to get out of the house so I finished preparing a bunch of boxes for a marketing mailing and headed for the post office, kids in tow.

  My timing was awful. The line was backed up. The kids were antsy.

  Standing there with boxes stacked up chest high on my dolly, I did a slow boil every time the little bugger smacked into me. Although red in the face, I waited, patiently. Actually, impatiently!

  Then, a post office worker closed his station and disappeared into the back leaving one guy to handle a long line. Every minute ticked by like an eternity.

  Finally, it was my turn.

  I rolled my boxes up to the counter and communicated calmly how to send them. One by one, I reached down, carefully, so I wouldn’t tear off any wires hidden under my shirt. While bent over, a 3-foot fleshy tank rammed into me and reached around my body in a death grip!

  Standing up, I looked at my son and said for all to hear, “Stop running into me, YOU KNOW I HAVE WIRES ALL OVER MY BODY!”

  You could hear a pin drop.

  Topino

  The tooth fairy is a celebrated legend in much of the world. So, too, is the tooth mouse.

  My dad was born to a Sicilian immigrant. Growing up, my dad and his siblings were told of “the little white tooth mouse.” Instead of a tooth fairy, it was a tooth mouse who would appear at night to exchange the baby tooth for a coin.

  Although Dad shared his childhood tale of the tooth mouse with my sister and me, we went with the American standard – the tooth fairy.

  When I had kids of my own, I decided to reintroduce the tooth mouse tradition of my dad’s childhood, but with a twist. First, I discovered the tooth mouse went by different names throughout the world. In Italian, the name was Topino.

  I told my kids that when their grandpa was a kid, there was a mouse in his house named Topino. Topino emmigrated from Sicily with the Satullo family. His job was to check the childrens’ teeth every night and when he found a wiggler, he’d put the tooth fairy on high alert. She was very busy so it was helpful to have a tooth mouse in the house. He would give her a head’s up so she could better plan her route each night. A tooth would be exchanged with a coin by the tooth mouse and a dollar bill by the tooth fairy. When kids grew up, so did their tooth mouse. The tooth mouse would have baby mice, all named Topino. When the kids started their own families, a Topino would move in with each of them.

  My son, Dominic, not only believed in Topino, he was so fascinated by this peculiar mouse, he took things to a new level. One night, my wife came into our room after replacing the tooth with a coin and bill and handed me a note. Our son was asking the tooth mouse questions like what does he look like, where does he live, what else did he like to do, and can he read this?

  So began a strange pen pal relationship between my son and me. Our minds worked together to open a whole new world. It didn’t matter if a tooth was loose or not, I had to check his desk to see if a letter was left for Topino. The fun wrapped around this communication between father and son was something for the ages. There were great adventures, head-scratching questions, revelations and more.

  One of Dominic’s favorite storylines revolved around the mischief Topino got into at night when he’d play with Dominic’s toys. One time we awoke to a toy car stuck in the chandelier. Don’t ask, it’s a long story! Topino also seemed to get into the same life situations as my son, at the same time, so it became the topic of conversation between them. Until one day it stopped.

  We had carried on the letter writing for a couple of years. Sure, there were some long pauses at times between letters so when they stopped altogether, I was slow to notice. Finally, I asked Dominic if he still left letters for Topino. He showed me the last letter he wrote that had gone unanswered.

  “Why did you put it here?” I asked, aware that it was not the usual spot.

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  Since it was not in the assumed usual spot, I explained that Topino may have missed the note. Dominic then moved the note to the old spot. But there was more to Topino not finding the letter than it just being in the wrong spot. Topino, too, had been in the wrong spot.

  Dominic ran downstairs the next morning with a wad of papers in hand.

  “Look – look, Topino, he’s back!”

  “Whattaya mean, back?” I a
sked coyly.

  “He hid in my bag the last time we went to Avon Lake to visit. It took him forever to get back and he waited a long time after that for me to write him. He didn’t know I did because I used a different spot for the letter so you were right about that, Dad. I can’t wait to hear about his adventure!”

  So there were stories that lasted another year.

  Then one day Dominic looked on in horror as I put out mouse poison in the garage, cautioning him to stay clear of it. I had to convince him that I bought a special blend that targeted unwanted mice versus a beloved tooth mouse like Topino. He preferred all mice live. I had other ideas considering the bag of seed they feasted on all winter.

  Eventually, it ended as most childhood fairytales end; by just growing too old to believe anymore.

  Feelin’ “The Heat!”

  I was in a melancholy mood when I went to the post-office. I had to pay a speeding ticket I received in a little town in Illinois named Galena. I was convinced that I was a victim of a speed trap. However, I was sure there would be hell-to-pay if I challenged this officer after what I had unknowingly done to him.

  Our family of four was on the first-day drive of our vacation across the country. After high winds and plenty of ugly gray windmill farms throughout Indiana and Illinois, we were happy to be closing in on our first destination. The road was winding through trees, up and down hilly countryside, when I saw the new speed limit sign. It was about the same time a patrol car passed from the opposite direction. I didn’t see the cruiser brake, slow or turnaround through my rear-view mirror. We rounded the bend and turned the music back up.

  The GPS was providing our navigation and we were listening to the MP3 playing Holiday Road by Lindsey Buckingham – a fitting song if you ever saw National Lampoon’s Vacation. Bobbing our heads and singing along, we drove over a hill and became mesmerized by a picturesque town ahead.

  The hillside view of Galena was just gorgeous!

  Our vehicle echoed with, “Look at THIS town, check out the building over there, no –look at that, we need a picture.”

  The spontaneity quickly turned to, “Stop there, no –turn there, turn again, WAIT! There’s a cop behind us with his lights on.”

  I pulled into a roadside parking space as I replayed our course in my mind. All I could imagine was that I must have rolled through a stop sign.

  I rolled my window down, feeling the heat and precipitation only it had nothing to do with the muggy weather. This officer was in my ear, spitting and shouting like a drill sergeant would to a new recruit.

  “Don’t they pull over to the right in Ohio!” he hollered. It wasn’t a question.

  I thought for sure this guy was gasoline and I was a lit match so I proceeded with caution and kindness. But he’d have none of it, except my license, registration and proof of insurance.

  He remained livid and shouted plenty more before storming back to his cruiser.

  Then, we waited …and waited …and waited.

  Meanwhile, I had to explain to my nine-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son that their dad was not going to jail (at least I didn’t think I was) but was most definitely going to get a ticket. My mind drifted to paying a fine and whether or not my insurance rate would go up. What a way to blow the budget on the first day of vacation!

  The policeman returned and the puzzle pieces fell into place. Here, it turned out he had been in the cop car I thought didn’t turn around wa-a-a-ay back on that country road. Now I’m not sure if he ever had his siren on because the music wasn’t THAT loud. The kids would have complained otherwise. His flashing light was not one mounted to the exterior of the car. Rather it was flashing from the interior. The officer ensued in what was a low-speed-chase covering a couple miles, by my estimation. The cop was convinced he was “chasing” defiant tourists, when in actuality our attention had been bent on taking photographs.

  Ticket apparent, I said as little as I had to when he returned to my window.

  Later, I read in a magazine that Galena was one of the hundred places I must see before I die.

  And we never did take a picture of it!

  Mount Cr@p Your Pants

  Hmmm. I was going to take the long way around until a park ranger challenged my manhood back at Natural Bridges National Monument. I had asked her if the Moki Dugway posed any danger. You know because of the kids and all.

  She looked me straight in the eyes and actually said, “Take off the skirt.”

  Nuff said. We’re doing it.

  As I sat, stopped, pulled off the road, staring at an intimidating sign warning what’s ahead, I looked at my wife riding shotgun and the kids through the rear-view mirror. We still had a choice, drive the long way around a mountain or go over the top of it. The problem with going over it was that it was described as having a steep, narrow, dirt, switch-back road without guard rails and a maximum speed limit of five miles per hour.

  I was still thinking about the death defying cliff drive we experienced just a week earlier when we rolled up to the Yellowstone gate at dusk. On that day, we were alone except for one ranger in one booth. I got to flash my national parks pass for the second time that day. I couldn’t help but smile.

  The Yellowstone ranger said we came at the perfect time. I asked why. He said this road had been closed all afternoon because of the snow but had just reopened 30 minutes ago. Then he made an offer we should have refused. He said from what he was hearing, the road could be closed again in as little as 15 minutes so if we’re going, we’d better go now.

  Somewhere inside of me, I was naïvely thinking if there’s any real danger, a ranger would never …

  Yellowstone’s East Entrance was along a steep cliff down on the left and up on the right. The right side of the road at least had a pitch to it, but the left side was a straight drop to a bottom, too far to see. The music was off. Nobody so much as whispered except for an occasional gasp. Then our bodies stiffened!

  YIKES!

  Snow drifted over our lane as high as our vehicle, leaving the slightest space in the opposing lane to maneuver around it. As if that weren’t bad enough, there were no guard rails. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the road was icy. We couldn’t have turned around if we wanted. Driving in reverse was out of the question. If we stopped, I was afraid the vehicle would slide off the edge. So we crept ever so slowly into the opposite lane, careful not to look over the bare edge. My knuckles were as white as the landscape. My wife was clutching the dashboard and the kids had closed their eyes, sensing imminent danger. These driving conditions continued for such a long time, I wondered if we’d ever make it.

  “STOP!”

  In the middle of the road, there was a bison blanketed in snow. We thread the needle of the large animal on the side with the snow drift and the sheer death plunge on the other side.

  “Please Mr. Buffalo; do NOT nudge us in any way.”

  My wife snapped me back to the present situation, “Are you going or not?”

  I phoned a friend who had come this way in the past.

  “Mike, did you go on this dirt road over mount…?”

  “If you don’t go over it, you will miss some of the most spectacular views,” he deadpanned.

  Queuing up Pink Floyd’s Learning to Fly, we ascended into the sky when I thought The Turning Away may have been the more appropriate song choice.

  This was one speed limit I certainly would not break. Once we were clearly at breakneck heights I felt like I was hyperventilating …just a little bit.

  The kids loved it.

  They also loved my fear. “Dad, how fast would we hit bottom if the edge of the road crumbles around this next turn?”

  “QUIET! Let me concentrate!” I was serious.

  Meanwhile, my wife was busy taking pictures and some out-of-focus video. Her sound effects were in awe of the incredible views; she kept pointing as if I was supposed to look.

  Going up I had to drive on the outer part of the 1 ½ lane road. As long as
there weren’t any cars coming from the other direction, I was able to hug the rock wall on the inner part of the lane, still being very conscious of the slight dirt embankment separating us from a death fall.

  There were times when I, too, got swept up in the amazing breadth of scenery the closer we got to the summit. It was like looking out of an airplane window (except when rock cliffs were in my peripheral vision) and seeing a ribbon of road stretching for what might have been a hundred miles. Perhaps I’m slightly exaggerating but it was a sight to behold.

  “CAR,” shouted my wife.