Why my neighbors thought I was mentally handicapped.

Coming from a military family you don’t really get aquainted with the neighbors so much. I mean, the second there are police cars or firetrucks outside your house suddenly the entire neighborhood takes their dogs on walks or decides 3 am is the perfect time for gardening..

My dad decided to take some time on leave around the time I was in elementary school so the family picked up and moved to Salem, OR…er wait, no. Keizer, OR. A small suburb just north of Salem. When we finally moved in I thought it would be very friendly of me to introduce myself to the locals!

Not realizing that we were located (surprisingly) in an upper-middle class, conservative, white neighborhood I didn’t understand that I was something very strange for them: a chubby hispanic tween with huge breasts, acne, weird clothes, and a slight lisp. Add that to the extra-weird friendliness action. I also loved to wear my hair in various ponytails of different colors, shapes, sizes and places. It was one of my favorite things being able to wear bright colors and mix and “match” and I never really thought twice about how that, and a string of untimely events might ultimately lead to my neighbors to think I was mentally handicapped.

Part 1.

As a kid I was so stubborn that if you asked me not to brush my teeth, I would. Just to spite you. In retrospect that is probably what my parents should’ve done..

So about 6 months or so after moving in I was assigned a book report for my 5^th grade class. I don’t exaclty remember what it was on, but I do remember absolutely fucking hating it. I stayed in my room all day so I wouldn’t have to walk by our computer or have to explain to my parents what I was up to. Finally after several hours of fasting and procrastinating, the delectable scents wafting up from the kitchen were enough to make me float downstairs towards the dinner table.

Dinner went like usual; prayer, eating, talking, talking about work, eating. Until it got onto the subject of the book report my parents mysteriously knew I had to do. I was livid. I felt so betrayed and the food I had just eaten curdled in the bottom of my stomach. I felt so stupid for having let my stomach get the better of me, but it was too late. My parents knew, therefore it needed to get finished.

After dinner I sulked into the computer room, beaten and discouraged but not any less pissed off. There was no way I was going to give in and let them win. The only way this report was going to get finished is if they did it for me. Sitting at the computer table I quickly glanced around looking for things to distract me from having to stare at the computer screen for however long I was suspended in this book report purgatory.

ALAS! In the slider for the keyboard there was a little hole that was just big enough to shove my fingers in, one at a time, over and over again. I did this for a good half hour while I thought to myself how smug I was that my parents thought I was busy doing what they wanted me to do but I was really getting away with this right under their noses. As I was congratulating myself I didn’t realize that the friction from constantly inserting my fingers into the little wooden hole was causing my fingers to swell.

As you can guess, my right ring finger was just the right man for the job. It got stuck in the hole. First, before panic set in, I tried yanking it out.

Second, I screamed at the top of my lungs and my parents came running in to see what horrible thing had happened, only to find me in my pink fuzzy onesy with my finger caught in the computer desk and my face bright red from wailing.

My mom finally came around to calling the fire dept after several failed attempts at removing my filange out of the hole. An hour later with the help of the local fire dept, lotion, tissues, and suction I was finally free from the woody grip of computer hutch death.

Because we lived in the suburbs, that incident was really the most action those firefighters see in a month and just so happened to make the next morning’s newspaper. Awesome for me, right? No.

Part 2.

My brother and I were very close and very competitive while growing up and we were always racing or wrestling or fighting over something, of which he usually won.

One of our activities included racing eachother on our bikes down the street next to our house. Our neighborhood was a pretty quiet one and street traffic was usually minimal to none so we would race around for hours. One day, a few weeks after the hutch incident, we were racing eachother a block away from our house. The house on the corner was owned by a friend of my brother’s who was just a really interesting kid, ya know, the kind that just has something..odd. His family was also kinda weird and I usually stayed away.

This day they had decided to park their truck infront of their house. A big pickup truck, parked infront of the house on the corner.

On this particular day I notice that I’m winning! My stupid, younger, more athletic brother was going down and I wanted to beat him so bad. Hurdling myself and my bike down the paved street I finally reached the last turn onto our street. I wanted to rub it in to his pathetic little face how hard he was losing and how much of a win I was.

As I came careening around the corner I turned my head to look back and POW! I ran head-first into the back of the parked pickup.

The amazing thing isn’t just that I wasn’t injured. It was that my neighbor’s wife came hurtling out of her house at a maniacal pace shrieking at the top of her lungs “MY CAR MY CAR!!!” while I lay motionless under the heap of scrap metal that once consisted of my bike.

It turns out that the nighbor living next to us happened to be a local minister at the presybetyrannisaurus church (whose window happened to be in full view of our computer room).

A couple weeks after the incident my mom gets an invite to attend one of his services. Being polite she says yes and we make plans to attend the following Sunday. I mean, as a kid church really is an excuse to get free cookies, make fun of other kids and sneak a cup or four of coffee while my parents weren’t looking. As I went about my usual Sunday routine I noticed that all the people there were treating me differently.

Which included: Asking me not to touch anything, limiting how many cookies I ate, staring at me, and asking me silly questions about how old I was and if I could spell. Sick and tired of all the bullshit I herded back to my mother and stood next to her while she was conversing with our neighbor the minister. He was obviously trying to advertise his church and that we should TOTALLY come here. At that moment I had no idea what he was talking about so I stayed quiet, like I had been the entire morning.

I was content to stand next to my mom and ignore him completely until he looked down at me specifically and said: “Oh! And we also have ‘special’ programs for our special needs children.”