When I played Charlie Brown
in my high school production of
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown!
it was a mixed compliment
to earn the lead role. I was
confused about how to wear
my hair in those days. Short
enough to spike like punk rock,
or long enough to toss like new
wave. I was in between: spike tossed.
During the intermission of the final
show, Linus and I went to a grade eight
bathroom on the second floor
and smoked a big doobie.
Being stoned was the perfect
method for my opening monologue
about hope and the beauty
of little things. I am standing
beneath a poster-board tree
with a single poster-board leaf
suspended by a clothespin.
I speak about hope and beauty
to my parents, and the parents
of all my high school peers.
I tell them that life is joyous
because of the grass (Linus
laugh-snorts in the wings),
the humming bees,
the little fluttering gnats
(I ad lib for several extra
minutes). I can hardly see them
through the floodlights,
but I can feel our parents genuinely
confused. And when the stage
hand sensed a resolving pause
in my stoned tractatus,
of course, the leaf dropped.
Failure, death: a punchline.
I'm no longer in touch
with Lucy, Snoopy,
Schroeder, members
of the band. Only Linus.
Linus I still hear from,
albeit, very rarely.
I used to ride my bike to Graham Drugs.
My sister's purple Fastback Princess with
a comfortable white banana seat.
I'd lean it against the gray stone wall of
the store without locking it. Remove my
bike clip and put it on my wrist. They had
all the kinds of candy I liked: black balls,
Bubble Yum, Koo Koo Bars, Crunchies,
Cherry Blossoms, Smarties, Sweet Tarts, Garbage
Cans, Popeye Cigarettes, and Lick-A-Sticks.
And stuff to read: Archie and Richie Rich
digests, Hockey Illustrated, Mad Tab
Libs. When my parents had been traveling
for a long stretch, and I was left alone
(with Mrs. V the 'babysitter' who
treated me like her twelve-year-old best friend)
I might pick up Mexican Jumping Beans.
They sold them in a small plastic snap-box
with just enough room so they could be heard
jumping. Clicking their hard bean selves against
the clear plastic lid of the container.
I've since learned it's a moth's larva that makes
them 'jump'. But at the time I didn't care.
These were mysterious little jumping friends
I kept because my sisters had moved out.
My parents were in Frankfurt and Milan.
Mrs. V soaked them in water when they
dried up and stopped moving. Sometimes this worked
to make them move again like living things.
Some times the larvae were already dead.
