When I was a teenager, my parents moved from Houston out to Katy. It was my senior year in High School and I was NOT about to graduate from Katy. No offense to KHS but when I moved out there, Mason road was a 2 lane blacktop that ended at the Cimarron Parkway. There was nothing out there but rice and coyotes.
The town of Katy, itself, offered no excitement either. Nope, all my fun and friends lay 25 miles to the east and so I purchased a motorcycle so I could cart myself to Houston and finish High School with my friends.
The motorcycle was a pitiful thing. It was the biggest one I could afford which meant that it was also the smallest motorcycle in existence at the time. Though I thought I cut a dashing figure on the bike, in reality, I looked like a circus act....you know, one of those trained bears on a toy. But it was mine. I loved it because it represented a freedom that I had seldom known.
It had, however, one major malfunction. Though the motorcycle was purchased with the intention of bringing me to Robert E. Lee High School, it seldom was able to accomplish that task. It was a simple route really, East on I-10; exit at Voss; South on Voss till it turns into Hillcroft; Continue on Hillcroft to two blocks past Westheimer and Voila'! You're at school.
For some inexplicable reason, however, this particular motorcycle often failed to make the Voss exit. It would continue on to Interstate 45 and turn south and refuse to stop until it got to Galveston.
On these days, when I opened up my backpack, I discovered that, instead of schoolbooks, some gremlin or poltergeist had packed swim trunks, coconut oil and, on particularly odd days, a Ronco Pocket Fisherman. Clearly my bike was posessed and I was dealing with paranormal entities beyond my ability to resist.
It was on just such a day that I came home. My usual time, 10:30 or so. I was a teenager with a posessed motorcycle and I considered it prudent to interact with my parents as little as possible. Therefore, since it was my parents' habit to retire at 10:00, I would come home at 10:30, pass their room on the stairs, mumble something like, "..'night...'love you" and head for the safety of my room.
Now....nature has instilled into teenage boys, a defense mechanism...a sixth sense, if you will. It lets them know when they are about to catch some particular kind of hell from their mom. For some reason or other, when mothers are mad, they emit an aura (let's call it a "circle of influence")
Teenage boys are accutely sensitive to this aura. Although there are some residual sensitivities in fathers and an especially beneavolent father will also sense the circle of influence, head off his son before the volcano erupts, stuff cash in his pocket and, depending upon the strength of the signal, either tell him to catch a movie or a bus headed out of town. An extremely strong aura will usually end up in the father telling his son that his only hope of survival is to join the military.
The range of this circle of influence varies depending upon the inherent sweetness of the mother in question. For instance, June Cleaver's circle of influence might be detected by Wally and The Beav as they are sitting across the dinner table. They will catch whiffs of it as she passes them the mashed potatoes.
My own dear mom's circle of influence has been detected by NASA probes while circling the far side of the moon. It had been known to cause dormant volcanoes to spring to life and once, when my brother did something, my mom sent out a signal that caused a team of sled dogs on the northern slope of Alaska to turn and rend thier owner to pieces.
While my mom was never able to control the strength of her signal, she was able to manipulate the range. She could draw in in tighter, thus allowing her unsuspecting teenage son to wander within striking distance. The danger in doing this, however, was that the strength of the signal increased exponentially as the range tightened. (scientists call this, "achieving a critical mass") If you didn't watch yourself, you could drift into one of these and catch severe radiation poisoning.
Such was the situation on this particular evening. I didn't detect my mom's aura until I got to the top of the stais and then it hit me full force. (I still think that my hearing loss in my right ear can be traced back to this moment)
The calm in my mother's voice was unsettling "Come in here", she said.
I ventured a toe past the threshold of her room.
"closer"
(years later I watched Hannible Lechter say "closer" to Clarice Starling and he wasn't NEARLY as scary)
I assessed the situation. The strength of the aura emanating from my mom was palpable. Another two or three minutes in her thrall and my nose and ears would begin to bleed, my heart would start fibrulating and I would lose conciousness. My mom was a fifty year old woman, overweight and wrapped in bedclothes. I was a teenage boy in my prime and still slippery with coconut oil. From where I was, my escape was even money. Any closer, however, and I was doomed.
"I'm fine right where I am", I said.
"Mr. Butler called me this evening"
"Mr. Butler?"
"YOU'RE GOVERNMENT TEACHER!!!!!" (this was the hearing loss part)
feigned ignorance isn't much of a defense but it was all I had.
"oh?"
"You've missed nearly two weeks of government this semester"
I thought, "only two?" but I said...."nooooooooo"
All of my friends had wisely finished all of the required courses for graduation so that, during that last semester, they could skip as much school as they wanted and still graduate. I, however, had left government undone.
"Are you aware that you need to pass government in order to graduate?"
I thought...."What? you think I'm taking it because I want to run for president some day?" ...but I said, "really?"
"Mr. Butler informs me that you need to make a "B" on your final in order to pass the course."
"no problem. I'm great on tests" (it's true. I passed all my English classes without turning in one assignment. All you have to do is ace the tests and you'll get a D-)
"You're staying up all night and studying mister! And just to make sure, I'm going to study with you!"
My mom's idea of "studying with me" entailed a sort of torture that would make waterboarding seem like a sorority pillow fight. I swear, if my mom were aive today, Moveon.org would be posting Youtube videos protesting her methods. Somehow I managed to survive the night and, after checking my backpack, my mom sent me off to school (poltergeists and gremlins were no match for her).
I drove my motorcycle along the feeder road near Fry, thinking how lucky I was to be alive and with all my limbs intact. It was at that moment that a huge dog (or maybe a buffalo) ran out in front of me causing me to swerve and lose control of my bike.
Being in an accident is a curious experience. Adrenelline causes your mind to race and the result is a heightened awareness where you experience the whole affair in an out-of-body like state and you witness your own destruction with a clinical detachment in Sam Peckinpah slow motion. It goes something like this...
"Oh dear, that was a very big dog...I seem to be coming off my bike....I wonder if it will hurt when I hit the ground....I think I just broke my elbow.....my bike seems to be rolling over me......was that the kickstand that just went into my calf?.....now I seem to be rolling over my bike.....that muffler seems awfully warm.....what's the difference between a second and third degree burn?.........My helmet seems to be caught under the bike and it is dragging me along the road.....I'm glad I wore a helmet....I wonder if I'll stop before the road wears away my helmet and starts to grind away my skull...."
When I did come to a stop my elbow was indeed broken (chipped really), There was a puncture wound in my left calf. My right calf had a nasty muffler burn and my helmet only had a paper-thin bit of styrofoam left where the road had worn it away. What hurt the most, however, was the fact that my arms and back were covered with scrapes. Tarry bits of gravel clung to my wounds.
I didn't know if it was safe to move but I really felt like I had moved enough for one day and so I lay in the ditch next to the road and tried to lose conciousness. I was dimmly aware that morning commuters were passing me by. Surely people were aware of me lying in a broken heap next to the road. This must be what that guy in The Good Samaritan story felt like.
Finally, a man did stop. He assessed the damage, placed me in the cab of his truck, my motorcycle in the back and took me to his house where I called my mom to inform her of my accident.
You would think that any mom, seeing her son in such a state, would quickly forgive all of his wrongs, beg him not to die, and hurry him off to the emergency room. But not my mom....
Nope, years of conditioning had calloused my mom to seeing me injured. I was what what you might call "accident-prone". By the time I reached my teen years, not only emergency rooms but entire wings of hospitals had been named in my honor.. When he was murdered, Rasputin was shot, stabbed, poisoned and finally drowned. My family holds the belief that I will not die as easily as he did.
In the interest of their own financial health, my parents had started to refuse to take me to the emergency room for any injury short of losing a limb. My mom taught herself the art of first aid and was as able as any marine medic. She could handle any injury right up to and including a sucking chest wound.
So my mom took me back home, put me in the shower, took a plastic scrub brush to my body and began to scrub the gravel from my scrapes as she grilled me on the things we studied the night before...
(scrub)..."what are the three branches of government?""
OOOOOOUUUCHH!"
(scrub)..."talk!"
"Ah...ah...the executive...the legislative....and the....."
(scrub)
"ARGGGGGGHHH!...THE JUDICIAL!!!"
(scrub)"How many senators from each state?"
"it depends upon the population of the....no...no...not the iodine...I'll get it mom, I swear!"
An hour later, swathed in bloody gauze bandages and smelling like antisceptic, my mom marched me into Mr. Butler's government classroom with fifteen minutes still left on the clock to take my final. She sat me down, placed a sharpened #2 pencil in my hand, turned, and strode out the door.
My eyes would not focus. My body was wracked with pain and I knew my mom would not administer so much as an aspirin until I finished that test. Summer school began to be a viable option. I hurridly marked down a random pattern on the test paper. A...C...C....D...C...A...and so forth. I finished just as the bell rang, whimpered as I rose from my desk and dropped my test on Mr. Butler's desk as I shuffled out the door.
Two days later, walking almost normally now, my arm in a sling, I went past Mr. Butler's room to see how dismally I had failed. To my astonishment, right next to my name was a B+. I had aced the test. I went into Mr. Butler's classroom and said, "Wow...I didn't think I had a chance of passing that test"Mr. Butler looked up from his papers, "You didn't, Boyce", he said. "I just felt so sorry for you when your mom dragged you in here that I didn't have the heart to fail you".
It was then that I realized that there is a sort of sympathetic brotherhood between men. I never imagined that someone as ancient as Mr. Butler would ever have a mom and yet there was the evidence of his empathy with me...on the grade list outside, right next to my name.
"Thanks Mr. Butler"
"Just do me one favor, Boyce"
"Anything"
"Just never run for public office"
"Sure"
I turned and shuffled out the door....
And that's how I graduated High School by the skin of my teeth, thanks to my mom and a motorcycle accident.
I've never said it before but.....thanks, mom.
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