And that was that. No more track. Sophomore year was almost over. Summer was almost here.
While track was going, I felt I had a reason for getting out of my bed: Beat Ken Johnson. Without track, I was back to lying in bed wondering if I’m funny. (I really wanted to be a comedian…maybe I still do.)
CHAPTER 3: PROOF IN MAY I SHOULDN'T BE A COMEDIAN
A.
Nobody laughed at my jokes except for Gus, who is my best friend. He thinks I’m hilarious, of course, but he’s been my best friend forever, so he’s biased. My so-called second best friend, Peter Yang? He never laughed at anything. What funny man would hang out with a dude who never laughs?
B.
In seventh grade, I did the school talent show, and I ripped a routine right square out of my Jerry Seinfeld Live on Broadway: I’m Telling You for the Last Time DVD and nobody laughed. Jerry Seinfeld is hilarious. He’s a comic genius. Everybody laughs at him. I did his shtick, and I got nothing except for Ben Schilling shouting at me to get off the stage (yes, he got detention) and also a couple of other kids booing. That means the bearer of the jokes wasn’t funny (I was the bearer, if you didn’t get that).
C.
When I talked, I often talked way too fast, sometimes so fast I even annoyed myself (not to mention others), especially when I talked too fast in my head, which, for most of my life, I have done 24/7, which is not funny. This can still be a problem. Shut up, voice in head. Not funny! Not funny! Seriously, not funny.
***
Let us address some larger issues, shall we?
My dad must be part of this discussion:
I used to think about my dad a lot. I used to think he was with me wherever I went, and that made me feel good. I used to ask him for help and ask him to keep me safe, which is weird. He’s dead. I thought a ghost was keeping an eye on me.
Aha! When I was eleven, it occurred to me that he killed himself (I found him when I was five), so he obviously didn’t want to be with me at all because he made sure he’d never see me again no matter what, so I stopped kidding myself that my dad’s ghost was hanging around taking care of me. Hanging around is a bad way to put it.
Ha ha.
See? None of that’s funny.
***
Let’s address the bonfire.
There really aren’t any pictures of Dad left because when I was seven, Jerri had this giant bonfire to help me and Andrew “let go of the past.” We listened to Celtic music and burned Dad’s books and shirts and photo albums, etc. Just about everything. (Not totally everything.)
You can’t burn memories, Jerri. I guess you know that now.
I have some memories.
Here’s a memory:
One time, when I was maybe four, Dad put me in our old Volvo station wagon (a car Jerri got rid of around the time of the bonfire, even though I screamed “Noooo!”) and drove us out to the big Mound east of town (an important Mound). I sat down at the bottom while Dad jogged up and down it, which doesn’t make a lot of sense given what I knew about Dad from Jerri (a short, fat dad). He jogged, and I played in the dirt or whatever, and he jogged, and I remember shouting at him, “Daddy! Daddy!” etc., and he jogged. When he stopped, he was all sweaty, and he walked over to me and whispered, “That’s better. That’s better.” Then he said, “What the hell are you doing, Felton?” I believe I was eating a rock. I remember the Volvo smelled funny on the drive back because he was so sweaty. Not exactly like Cody Frederick funny but sort of. When we got home, Dad said, “Thanks for accompanying me, buddy.” That was nice.
I really loved that car—it was freaking huge—but Jerri said it had bad vibes. So it went away like all Dad’s pictures.
I do have some memories though. Not funny ones.
***
Let’s delve into Jerri a bit!
While I was home from school sweating and not eating after my Regionals screw-up, Jerri, between her crossing guard shifts, often stood at the landing of the stairs that lead into the basement, where my room is and where I watch TV. She would stand there and watch me sleeping. Except, I wasn’t asleep. I was watching Comedy Central. I would pretend to sleep when I’d hear her creep down the stairs so I wouldn’t have to talk to her (as she had taken to saying very weird things, very incomprehensible things that my brain did not understand). I’d squint my eyes so they looked closed, but they were open just enough to continue watching Comedy Central. Sometimes, she’d stand there looking at me for a whole episode of MADtv, and I’d get uncomfortable and want to move, but I didn’t because her freakiness was freaking me out. Sometimes, I could hear her swallowing, like she was crying or something, which was totally weird. I got disqualified from a stupid track meet, for God’s sake. I was pretty upset, but it wasn’t so tragic that my mom should’ve been crying about it.
You know what? Of course she wasn’t crying about the track meet. I was just a dumb kid back in May.
One day, she stood there for like an hour, swallowing and staring, and it just got to be too much. I had an itch on my leg and couldn’t hold on anymore, so I said, “Can I help you, Jerri?”
She flinched and said, “No…just checking on you.”
“Okay!” I said.
“I don’t think it’s bad to be in sports, Felton.”
Why the hell would it be? Incomprehensible!
Then she went upstairs.
Incomprehensible jokes aren’t funny, by the way.
***
And, finally, let’s address Bluffton.
Disclaimer: Jerri says I shouldn’t say “retard” all the time because it’s disrespectful to people who have really low IQs, but that’s not what I’m talking about, you know? I sincerely apologize to anyone I offend by saying “retard.” Okay: There have been times when I truly feel like I’m a retard and that everybody thinks I’m retarded, and because they think I’m retarded, I get nervous and I act like a retard, which simply fulfills their expectations. It’s a big circle. The retarded circle of my life.
Am I retarded? Well…
I am a Reinstein. I live on the outskirts of a small town in southwestern Wisconsin on ten acres from which I can see the town’s little country club and golf course—which I’ve called ugly. From my home, I can also see all the alcoholic, blithering golf dads who swear and scream.
I blamed my dad for this situation, for abandoning us here by hanging himself in the garage. And I also blamed Jerri because she’s from here and should’ve known better. I believe Bluffton, Wisconsin, is a terrible place.
On good days, this is what I’ve thought: I’m not retarded. Bluffton is retarded. It has a dumb little college, which is why my dad came here (to teach). Mostly all the students at the dumb little college are dumb, and they think they’re king shit or whatever because they’re drunk and walking around shouting and in college. Other than the college, Bluffton has a dumb main street, where kids my age stand around staring at each other, or, if they’re old enough and have access to a car, they drive up and down the street, staring at the dumb kids staring at each other. Sometimes, they drive to Walmart, which is really big. Bluffton also has a McDonald’s and a Subway and a Pizza Hut and a combo KFC–Taco Bell. (KenTacoFrickinBell—retarded.) And there are lots of hills and lots of farms outside the city limits and lots of farmers who drive their pickup trucks and smell like poop and lots of black and white cows standing on the hills staring at you like you’re a retard or like you’re a kid on main street.
And listen to this: I never even minded cows. I never minded poop-smelling farmers, even though they can be mean and gross (they blow snot out of their noses onto the snow). Farmers and their poop-smelling kids are not why Bluffton has seemed retarded and why me and my friends have called it Suckville.
Me, Peter, and Gus (my only friends forever) figured the facts out in eighth grade. The reason we wanted to rename Bluffton Suckville is because of the town kids: the public school teachers’ kids and the lawyers’ kids and the doctors’ kids and the cops’ kids and the ins
urance salespeople’s and the bankers’ kids and the orthodontist’s daughter, Abby Sauter, who has been very mean.
“They’re all dumb and annoying!” we shouted. “They’re the retarded ones!” we said. They honestly do think they’re the special children of God. Gus calls these kids honkies. I don’t know why, but it makes me laugh. Even now. Honkies.
We aren’t honkies (maybe I am). Me, Peter, and Gus are college kids (that is, kids of college professors).
At least, I used to be.
We are a minority! We are oppressed!
At least, I used to be. I’m crazy.
Gus and I tried to write a horror movie script last year titled The Retarded Honkies of Suckville! We wrote two pages actually. Gus wrote some good jokes.
I didn’t write any jokes because I wasn’t funny.
Gus is hilarious. Gus could be a great standup comic right now, even though he doesn’t want to be. He’s really small, and he’s got this wad of black hair that’s always sort of long, and he ducks his head so his bangs cover his eyes so he can hide the fact that he thinks everybody is just dumb. I know he’s under his hair rolling his eyes and making faces. Everybody else knows too. He used to drive the junior and senior honkies crazy because they knew he was making fun of them, but they couldn’t catch him because his hair wad was in front of his eyes. He’s so dang funny, hugely hilarious, which is the greatest compliment I can give anybody.
He also left for the summer, which threatened to make Bluffton double Suckville, maybe triple Suckville, as I wasn’t exactly in love with Peter Yang, who was my remaining friend.
Not funny. Not funny. Not funny.
A comedian? I don’t think so.
***
It’s 1:20 a.m. I am not sleepy.
CHAPTER 4: THE TERRIBLE PHONE CALL OF LATE MAY!
This is how the summer began.
Imagine this:
It’s the Saturday before the last week of school. I’m lying downstairs on the couch outside my bedroom, down in the basement, lights out, resting with my thoughts and the TV, and sweating hugely because of my disqualification at Regionals. Andrew’s upstairs in the living room playing about ten annoying notes on the piano, over and over, singing along with them, totally off-key and very loud, which he does a lot, which I find excessively annoying. The phone rings. Jerri answers, her voice echoing throughout the house.
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry, Teresa.” Jerri says Teresa in her best Spanish accent, Tayraysa, even rolling the r.
Jerri thinks she knows Spanish because she took hippy drumming lessons from a dude named Tito a few years ago. Tayraysaaa. Teresa happens to be Gus’s Venezuelan mom.
I sit up, which isn’t easy as I’m weak from not eating. Is something wrong with Gus?
“Of course, Tayraysa. Felton can do Gus’s paper route. He really needs to re-engage.”
Paper route? Re-engage? Oh, no. Jerri said re-engage, which is code for torture Felton.
Gus’s ridiculous paper route? Torture!
My stomach is rumbling, churning, burning, almost ready to upchuck, except there’s no food inside of me.
What if something is wrong with Gus?
“I’ll have Felton call later this morning, Tayraysa,” Jerri says.
I leap from the couch and run upstairs just as Jerri is hanging up the phone.
“What the hell, Jerri? What’s wrong?”
“Felton, Gus is leaving.”
“What do you mean? When?”
“Next weekend. Tayraysa’s mother is gravely ill. “
“Yeah? She’s been sick since third grade. So freaking what?”
“The doctors don’t think she’ll make it through the summer, so the Alfonsos are going to Venezuela to be with her.”
“Aw, hell! What am I supposed to do all summer?”
“You can help Gus out. He needs a friend.”
“Who am I gonna chill with, Jerri?”
“Gus needs help with that route.”
“Paper route? Come on! He doesn’t give a crap.”
“Well, Tayraysa does. And I do.”
“You?”
“Yes. So you’re going to help Gus out, do you understand?”
“Aw, man! Jesus Christ! Come on!”
Meanwhile, Andrew’s plinking the piano behind me, still singing along with those ten notes.
Blah la la blah. Plink plink plink.
“Shut your freaking piano, Andrew. We’re in crisis here,” I shout.
Andrew turns. Looks at me. Says “What?” but stops, which is lucky for him because I’m about to take him down with some serious karate-chopping to the nose, throat, and mouth if he doesn’t stop.
***
MY F-BOMB SUMMER by Felton Reinstein:
Kick off with a serious sweat fest. Add the absence of best friend. Stick in a damn morning paper route. Make sure it all goes down in Suckville. Fantastic!
“Damn, Jerri!” I shout.
***
By the way.
Every time in my life that Jerri has said “Felton needs to re-engage,” I’ve ended up with a new freak tale to add to my squirrel nut history. For example, I had these scary anxiety attacks back in fourth grade. I kept thinking my heart wasn’t pumping right, which seriously terrified me, of course, and me being scared would make it pump faster. So because it pumped faster, I got more scared, so it pumped faster and faster and faster, which was complete proof to me that my heart was completely malfunctioning and was about to explode, and I’d get dizzy, and squeaky-voiced, and sick, and not be able to breathe, sucking for air while Mrs. Derrell, my teacher, went on and on about Wisconsin’s first settlers, who I can’t remember because my heart was killing me. I think they wore straw hats and suspenders.
Jerri took me to a doctor, who said my heart was fine, but I seemed to be anxious (no crap!). Jerri was so relieved. But the doctor’s opinion didn’t help me because it kept happening, my heart attacks, so I stopped wanting to go to school because the heart attacks always happened at school.
After me refusing to go to school for a week, Jerri said I needed to learn to re-engage, so she took me to a cognitive behavioral therapist. The cognitive behavioral therapist suggested that when I start to have a freak-out and think my seriously healthy heart isn’t working right, I should look at somebody I know well in my class, a person I like a lot, and repeat his or her name three times to remember I have good friends and I’m not alone and everything will be okay. The therapist also said that I should breathe deep to calm down my heart, all of which I sincerely tried to do, except I was probably supposed to say Gus’s name in my head, not out loud, because when I did it during Mrs. Derrell’s lecture on immigrants making sausages in Milwaukee, the world fell silent and the whole class turned and stared at me, their eyeballs popping out of their heads like they were looking at the famous nose-picking gorilla at the Milwaukee Zoo—completely gross and weird—which made my heart bang in my chest, completely proving I was dying.
Imagine all of them staring at me with their mouths open wide.
For years after that, my classmates would whisper softly to me, “Gus, Gus, Gus,” and look at me sweetly but not sweet at all.
That’s not funny either, by the way.
If Gus weren’t my best friend and also sort of lacking in friends himself, he would probably have stopped being my friend because he caught so much crap too.
That wasn’t the only time Jerri suggested I re-engage. There are probably ten more incidents I could report through the years. But it’s late (1:23 a.m.).
And after I’d re-engage and freak out because of re-engaging, Jerri always ended up having to keep me home from school for weeks at a time and had to hug me a lot and cook me grilled cheese sandwiches and say sorry over and over.
All that stopped.
I made myself stop freaking out so much starting a couple of years ago. I got tired of being the center of attention. I don’t like attention—did not anyway—and I got tired of being hugged, and I got tired
of Jerri saying sorry to me. It’s not like Jerri murdered Dad. Dad murdered Dad, right?
But I suppose my post-Regional dry-heaving put Jerri back in the mood.
Re-engage. Re-engage, donkey. I sure didn’t like Jerri saying the word re-engage.
***
Two days after Tayraysa’s call, I ate those bagels and regained some of my strength and sanity. I went back to school in time to turn in my English research report about what I want to be when I grow up (titled “Standup Comedy: Take My Wife…Please”) and to take my stupid finals and to bid fare thee well to the senior class full of honkies and poop-stinkers and, of course, to Gus, who was leaving.
“I’m sorry, Felton,” Gus said as we exited Bluffton High on the last day of school, the sun beating down on our heads, our eyes squinty.
“You should be,” I said as we walked toward the bike rack.
“I don’t have any friends in Caracas, man,” he grimaced, unlocking his bike.
“I don’t have any friends in Suckville,” I said as we pedaled away.
“What about Peter Yang?” he asked, now a block from the school.
“Something’s gone amiss,” I told him, a look of resignation on my face.
“At least Peter Yang has a driver’s license,” he said, nearing his turnoff.
“That’s true,” I agreed as he turned.
“We can Skype, dude,” he shouted, biking away.
“Chapter over,” I mumbled, heading toward home.
***
Bleak. Bleak. Bleak.
Summer. Summer. Summer.
CHAPTER 5: I MEAN, MAN! I USED TO LOVE SUMMER!
I have very fond memories actually.
Every summer before this summer, we’d go camping at least once. For example, the summer after freshman year, Jerri took me and Andrew camping at Wyalusing State Park, right where the Wisconsin River cuts the state and hits the Mississippi. Where there are really high bluffs and huge trees and watery sand bars and little streams that look like mountain streams on TV flowing down the bluffs and ravines that cut through the forest and hiking trails right through it all. We spent two full days exploring.
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