Warts and All

For the most part, I was a very well-behaved kid. I did my homework, got good grades, and followed the rules . . . for the most part. But people, including children, are multi-dimensional and complex. Even the most well-behaved kids do things they shouldn't do, or things that are just weird to do . . . things that would surprise the adults in their lives. That's important for me to remember as I more fully develop the characters in my novel. No one is all good or all bad. 

When I was in second grade, I told my teachers I knew how to tap dance. Did I really? No. I thought the sound that my dress shoes made on tiles was tap-ish, so I figured I could wing it. My teachers invited me to tap dance for our class, and I agreed to do it. I never mentioned it to my parents. I snuck around, stuffed my fancy long pajama dress and dress shoes into a bag and crept off to school with it without mentioning it to anyone. When it was time, my teachers asked me to change into my tap dancing outfit, so I did, and when I came out, there were about 50 of my classmates and our two teachers waiting to see me dance. I looked out at them, froze, and ran off crying because I did not, in fact, know how to tap dance. Claude McKay made fun of me every day that year because of that botched show and tell. 

I was a little kleptomaniac. When I was six, I stole a pencil case from a pharmacy. I didn't just run in and grab it. I was methodical. My dad was doing some work for Flatbush Development Corporation, and while he was working, I went in and out of the store . . . looking around to make sure no one was watching . . . I must have gone in and out about three times before I swiped it, and I had the nerve to run out of the store holding the pencil case up to my dad, proclaiming that I had stolen it.

When Cabbage Patch Kids first came out, people were going crazy for them. When I went with a friend and her mother to Macy's one time, we went downstairs to the toy section, and there were tons of Cabbage Patch Kids everywhere that had been ripped from their boxes. Without wondering what my friend's mother would think when she saw me, I stuffed a Cabbage Patch Kid under my shirt and tried to escape with it. I chickened out when we got near the exit, lifted my shirt, let the doll fall the ground, and I kept running. You know what's messed up? I already had my own Cabbage Patch Kid at home. 

We had a phone in our bathroom when I was in elementary school, and I would sometimes sneak into the bathroom to call naughty phone numbers. I'm sure my parents thought it was my brother when they checked the phone bill and saw all those 976 numbers. It wasn't him. It was freaky, curious little Afrika. 

Once I asked my father if I could go out and play. He told me that I could if I changed out of my good shoes, stayed in the courtyard where he could see me, and stayed away from the corner store where my sister was. I agreed, and then went outside in my good shoes, left the courtyard, and went to the corner store. I thought I was slick, and that he hadn't noticed that I disobeyed all three things he asked of me. I was wrong. Our kitchen window faced the courtyard, and it was quite obvious that I hadn't listened to him at all.  

I'm not sure how, but I discovered that if you pulled the handle of the elevator on the first floor of my building while someone was in it, the elevator would stop. I hardly ever rode the elevator because we only lived on the second floor. Out of sheer boredom, I would randomly pull the handle as I was passing by. I have no idea why I did that. It would only stop for about 30 seconds and then restart, but the people in the elevator didn't know that. It reminds me of the scripture that talks about foolishness being bound in the heart of a child. It serves me right that I am now desperately claustrophobic. 

I went to a camp called Discovery Day Camp one summer, and it was one of the best summers I can remember. I made good friends there, and got to do a bunch of fun things all summer. Every Friday, exemplary campers were awarded with a Discovery Day Camp plastic mug. I really wanted one of those mugs. After several weeks of not being picked to receive one, I surreptitiously took one from a fellow camper when we were on the bus on our way home from camp that day, and passed it off as my own.  You know what's messed up? The next Friday, I was selected to receive an exemplary camper mug, so I ended up with two while the deserving child I stole it from the week before had none.  Smh . . .

So that I would no longer be a latch-key kid, my parents arranged for me to go home with a friend every day after school when I was in sixth grade. I loved it. She and her older sister were so much fun, and it was such a relief not to be alone. My family didn't have a VCR, but her family did, and we watched Purple Rain. I knew my parents wouldn't approve, but I did it anyway. For reasons I still don't understand, we would regularly fill large silver mixing bowls with water, and pour it out onto passers-by on the street below her sixth-floor window. I do believe that you reap what you sow, and one Halloween as I passed by Kings County Hospital on my way home from junior high school, someone threw a rock at my head from the roof. Could it have killed me? Probably. It was quite painful. I made different choices, though, about throwing things at people passing by after that incident. 

My sister, Bootsie, had these really cool orange and white high-top Nikes back in the day. I was going on a field trip to Six Flags - Great Adventure, and I really wanted to wear her sneakers. They were pretty new, but she let me borrow them anyway, under one condition - that I not ride on water rides with her sneakers on, or at least put them in plastic bag while on water rides so they wouldn't get wet. She told me that them getting wet would ruin them, but I didn't believe her. I wore them on a water ride, and I ruined her new sneakers. My sister, who had only ever been kind to me. I had one job.  Sigh . . .

While I was by no means The Bad Seed (that little girl was a straight-up psychopath), I definitely engaged in questionable, self-serving, sometimes illegal behaviors. My family joined a cult when I was 11, and while there are obvious problems with cult membership, I think part of the reason I was so compliant as a member was because I felt guilty for the mischievous and inappropriate things I had done. This church taught that if I was well-behaved, I could earn God's favor. My view of God has changed significantly since then. I know that my worth is not attached to my behavior. Instead of feeling shame for past misbehavior, I can use it as a reference point for building holistic, multi-dimensional characters. Several of the characters in my story are children, and depending on what I decide at the retreat, the book may begin when my main character is a child. Remembering what it was like to be a kid who was mostly well-behaved, but not always will help me to create believable characters that readers can relate to.

Oh yeah, and I used to eat matches. It might explain some things ;).  What are some of the mischievous things you did as a child?