According to my mom, I became very preoccupied with dying and death, and I assume it had to be around this time. I don't remember being so curious, but I do remember the trips to the therapist with my mom. According to her, I became too much to handle and she took me to a therapist, and rightfully so. How do you explain to an infant the complexities of dying? More importantly, why would an infant be so concerned?
I used to love going to that therapist. I guess it was because I was once again too young to understand what was happening. This therapist's office was in that big office building on Hempstead Turnpike, right by Lowes Theaters and Best Buy in Levittown. I don't remember what the rest of the building looked like, but the therapist's office was a small, dim lit room, with soft carpet. Every time my mom and I went, the three of us would sit on the floor and play Candy Land or with Lincoln Logs. I guess I was asked a bunch of questions, but I think in the end, the therapist ultimately distracted me long enough to not care about the inevitable and sent me on my way. I guess this is why I never cry or really feel anything when someone I know, someone I love, dies. I can't say for sure, but if I had to guess, I would say these early childhood therapy sessions were responsible.
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I don't ever recall a stage in my life where I found the opposite sex unappealing. The first girl I ever had feelings for, in the most remote sense, was Catherine from Pre-School. Looking back, I wouldn't say that I "loved" her, it was more infatuation. If we were playing house, and she wanted to be "the dog", I wanted to be "the other dog". If she wanted a toy that someone else was playing with, I made sure she got that toy. I was pussy whipped way before the term was even coined, and way before I would ever understand it.
I don't know why, but at some point I "graduated" from Pre-School to Nursery School. The difference being... well I really couldn't tell you. But Nursery School would be where I met my first real friends. Dominick and Alexa. The three of us were all from East Meadow, and oddly enough we all go to Hofstra now, weird. We typically did all the things you would expect kids in Nursery School to do: play with Legos and Play-Doh, run around outside, nap, pretend to be some dumb cartoon, all the things I wish I could do today without being diagnosed with some social disorder.
Other than making my first real friends, Nursery School remains important to me for two big reasons. The first being my first near death experience.
It was a rainy day. My mom had just arrived to pick me up and even though I probably had a great day with Dominick and Alexa, nothing was better than going home. I ran to collect my things, and slipped on some water from the rain and fell out of a window. My back was cut up from the glass and my ass hurt like hell from landing on the rocks placed outside, yet I did not cry a single tear until my mom found me a bloody and wet mess. I found out in psychology that most kids don't realize how hurt they are until the see the reaction on their parents face. I guess this is a textbook example. I don't know the statistics for toddlers who fell from a second floor window and lived, but I am sure I am apart of the smaller ratio.
The second reason Nursery School was important to me was a girl named Sarah.
Sarah was a blonde hair, blue eyed girl from North Bellmore. She lived at the second house on the right on North Jerusalem Ave after you make the left from East Meadow Ave. Sarah and I were incredibly close. Play-dates were frequent at both of our houses. After swimming in my pool, the two of us would bathe together. Sarah was the first girl I played "doctor" with. In other words, she was the first girl I ever sexually explored. A lot of our play dates resulted in us wearing only our underwear. I will never forget the day her older brother caught us. That was the last day I ever saw Sarah. Once again, I don't know if I would use the word "love" to describe how I felt about Sarah, but I do recall being devastated knowing that I was never going to see her again. Every time I pass her house, I think about stopping and knocking on the door and seeing if she still lives there. One day I might.
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The first day of Kindergarden marks the day I ever really felt overwhelming emotions for a girl. Her name was Kaleigh. She lived around the block from me, but we would take the same bus to and from school. When I first saw her at the bus stop, I immediately felt a change from within me. I was overcome with warmth and all I wanted to do was take her to my house and show her my fake pet fish. Kaleigh and I would spend everyday together for years and yes, we were in love. One of my moms favorite stories to tell about my childhood is about a conversation she overheard me and Kaleigh having that went something like this:
K: "I can't have a job, I need to take care of the baby. What job are you going to get?"
A: "I'm gonna be a paleontologist!"
K: "That doesn't sound like you'll be making a lot of money."
A: "Thats ok, we can live in an apartment."
K: "No, I want to live in a house!"
And so on.
Throughout Elementary School, Kaleigh and I would show our affection for one another by creating some really bizarre, whacked out version of tag that involved a lot of boys and girls chasing each other for no particular reason. Looking back, it really didn't make much sense, but I guess at the time there was no other way for me to show her I cared for her than to have my friends chase hers for the length of recess.
Kaleigh would eventually move to Levittown, putting our friendship on a hiatus of sorts.
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The kids I would meet in Elementary School would eventually to turn out to be the most important in my life, and if you care enough about the Long Island Music Scene, this will now apply to you.
Two of the first kids I ever looked up to were Jason Lopes and Matt Lagattuta.
Yes, that Matt Lagattuta.
Matt, Jay and I all took the same bus home from school. They may not remember this, but they were responsible, partially, for getting me into "serious" trouble for the first time in my life. As Second Graders, Matt and Jay found joy in cursing on the bus. Myself, being in first grade, also found it to be an enjoyable pass time, until the driver reported to my mother that I had been yelling "fuck" during the ride home. I started taking a different bus home after this.
When I was in Second Grade, my mother had to start working late on some days and enrolled me into Scope, a program where kids could do homework and play until their parents could come and pick them up. Once again, two very important things in my life happened during my time at Scope.
The first was my first kiss. Her name was Erica. Unfortunately, there is no cute story to accompany this tale. It doesn't make it any less important though.
The second would be the second meeting of Matt Lagattuta and myself, but I will get more into that later.
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Third Grade would mark the year that I officially became a "trouble maker". I began to use profanity liberally when my friend John has showed me how much fun it is when you don't get in trouble for it. During recess, we would run into the field and yell obscenities far out of ear shot of the guides, and for the first time I tasted what freedom was like. Being able to get away with even the most heinous of crimes and not need to worry about it.
I also learned how to solve my problems with violence in Third Grade. There are two instances that stand out in my mind. The first one being when Jordan, someone a considered a friend, took my Lego Pod Racer and broke it. My immediate reaction was to slam his head into the wall as hard as I can, as many times as I can. The second one was when Steve, someone I didn't really care for but I didn't hate him, stole my Pokemon Cards. I got them back from him that day, but the morning after, I close-lined him outside before school started and left him on the ground until my teacher asked where he was.
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Perhaps the most important event in my entire life happened in Third Grade, and that was my discovery of blink-182. Due to my neighbors David and Amanda turning me on to MTV, I spent most of the time I should have spent watching cartoons witnessing the only time when music would be played on MTV. Lucky for me, there are plenty of awesome cartoons for me to watch now, so I guess it evens out. I digress.
I was watching the VMA's terribly excited to watch artists I was barely familiar with win awards for more things that I was barely familiar with. Sure enough blink-182 would play "All the Small Things" and I would be forever changed. This was the performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TIEUCMtosM
That 2 minutes and 42 seconds would be the best 2 minutes and 42 seconds of my life, making me completely forget about my trip to Disney World the summer earlier.
The day after this I went to Coconuts with my dad and he bought me my first CD ever, "Enema of the State". I didn't have the CD for too long though. It was promptly taken away from me when my mother heard the lyrics "He's a fucking weasel!" during "Dysentery Gary". She was double pissed when she saw the album artwork. But by that point, it was too late to save me. blink-182 stole my heart and soul.
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Matt and I would meet again when I was in Fourth Grade at Scope. Like me, Matt also had an undying love for blink. It didn't take us long to hit it off, spending most of our time at Scope listening to his blink CDs on his walkman and discussing which songs we liked the best, essentially "fan girling" way before the term was coined (I'm just gonna break here and say that I will probably deliberately repeat phrases like this throughout the memoir, just fucking deal). This would be the planting of the seeds that would eventually grow to form the band Valet Parking.
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I hit puberty in Fifth Grade. Needless to say it did not take long for me to get used to it. In fact, I embraced it whole heartedly. This became a problem when I was found going to www.assfuckers.com on a school computer with my friend Amin. The entire East Meadow School District lost computer use for two weeks because of this. Amin and I of course lost computer privileges for the rest of the year.
My Grandmother Molly died when I was in Fifth Grade, and this was the first time I was ever exposed to racism. I of course was absent from school for a few days and when I returned, I explained to my class that my Grandmother had died and my family and I sat Shiva, as is custom in Judaism. Sure enough, I was passed a note from a girl named Veronica that explained to me that my Grandmother was in Hell because she was Jewish. My response to this was rather... interesting to say the least, and years ahead of my time. I became a Satanist, in the loosest form.
I don't know why worshiping Satan seemed like the correct response to Veronica telling me my Grandmother was in hell, but I guess it made sense at the time. Sure enough, my two friends Matt and David (both different from my neighbor and Lagattuta) joined me, and each day we would "sacrifice" toys to Satan during recess and dedicated a shrine at a tree to him. I think this probably scared the shit out of Veronica more than anything. I assume she thought that Satan would drive up from Hell with my Grandma sitting shotgun ready to drag her down to hell and rape her or some shit, because she spent a lot of time pleading with me to stop and even pleaded with me in her message that she wrote in my year book.
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By the end of Elementary School, I was eager to move on to Middle School, so I can join Matt and all his friends in everything from school dances to joining sports teams. Little did any of us know then of how quickly things would change.
