Confessions of a Redheaded Stepchild: A Memoir (Of Sorts)

By Scott Perry

Scott Perry is a product of your run-of-the-mill American family—19 kids, four or five moms, and two(ish) dads. Growing up in an innocent time when kids drank out of garden hoses, played Little League baseball, and poisoned their classroom guppies, his was a childhood jam-packed with bikes, bullies, grandmas, and growth spurts that slowly changed into a world of travel, trysts, Jello, and gin. Toss in a flying bull, a hypnotist, and two lovestruck mutts, and you'll get a taste of a life that began on the idyllic streets of Poplar Grove, USA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543976915

Book preview

AUTUMN

BIG BOY

I deserved a treat.

After winning the Kiwanis Club Hope of America award and an Honors Reader certificate plus two more for Perfect Attendance and Traffic Patrol, sixth grade had been a raging success. I was Student Body Secretary, and in charge of the decorations for all bulletin boards. I was also the best boy in the class at hopscotch.

Yes, it was a banner year, although no one seemed to notice. To my family, Perfect Attendance was a solid week at the bar. Traffic Patrol was someone who divvied out DUIs.

I waited for the bus in front of Qualls’ Market, seeking shade under the awning over their front window. I was sunburned to a crispy crunch from the day before and what little shade I could find was bliss. Red hair, freckles and a day full of Fourth of July festivities are a lethal combination.

As I waited, I greeted the customers as they walked in the door. I knew almost everyone in the neighborhood, whether from school, church, or the gossip my mom would spread. They all seemed to know me, too—either from school, church, or the neighborhood gossip about our own family. I stood there for about fifteen minutes, I guess, as I always did. Punctuality was crucial with bus schedules. Miss one, and you had to wait another fifty minutes. To a twelve year old, that’s a lifetime.

The bus arrived and I stepped aboard, greeting the driver as though we were pals from way back. I dropped the coins into the slot and watched the little conveyor belt drop them into the cache below. I liked to sit as close to the front as possible but not the front seats — they were reserved for the elderly or blind. But I liked to sit in the next one back, just in case the driver wanted to strike up a conversation with me as he did with the older passengers. He never did, but Hope springs eternal.

The bus snaked its way through the streets of Poplar Grove. The Fourth of July Weekend seemed to drag on forever. As I rocked back and forth in my seat, I thought of what a long, drawn-out holiday this always was. Most families had left town for the long weekend—the Larsens, the Quinns, the Chatwins. It seemed as though everyone I knew (save for the few at Qualls’ Market) had fallen off the planet. Every year, they’d go waterskiing at Echo Reservoir, or camping in the Uintas. The Chatwins always went to Tabiona (wherever that was) calling it Tabby for short. I was jealous. Not for the waterskiing—I was, and still am, petrified of water. Jealous perhaps that they were riding in their station wagons loaded with tackle boxes and Cokes; singing The Wheels on the Bus or playing the license plate game. At least that’s how I always imagined it.

Our family would stay home and wait until it was time to go to Uncle Gene’s, where the grownups would get drunk. The kids would fight or get yelled at for leaving char marks on the sidewalk from our fireworks, snakes and caps. That was the case every year. Cheap beer, fighting relatives and all I had to show for it was a blistering, peeling sunburn.

I pulled the buzzer cable to signal my exit at Main and Fourth South. The bus hissed to a stop and opened its doors. I bounced down the steps to the curb, telling the driver goodbye. Again he said nothing but I didn’t let it bother me this time. Better things lay ahead. Nothing was going to rain on my parade this year.

I walked a block to JB’s Big Boy, where the red and white checkered boy himself stood sentry at the door. My relatives always teased me that I looked like him—pudgy cheeks, round belly and an ever-present hamburger shoved in my mouth.

I walked in and took a seat at the counter where the air-conditioning felt good. My feet dangled a mile above the chrome foot rail as I reached for a menu. I didn’t really need it, because I had known for two weeks what I would be ordering.

No one seemed to notice me as I sat cooling my burned arms on the formica counter—different from the attention I got at Woolworth’s, my usual downtown hangout. I pivoted on my stool for what seemed like hours until the waitress came by. What would you like, she asked apathetically, sensing the zero-tip headed her way.

A JB’s Big Burger, please, with a Coke and a hot fudge sundae, I responded in the most mature voice my chirpy, unchanged one would muster. ‘Okay, just a sec, she said and vanished for another eternity.

I swiveled some more on my stool and thought of my friends waterskiing. I thought of yesterday’s family brawl and how Junior High was waiting in the wings. I was scared to death to go to Jordan Junior next fall. The older kids seemed like giants compared to my measly frame. Not only were they bigger than me, but there were more of them—all vying for the attention I used to get in spades at Edison. No more accolades and atta boys, just wedgies and getting stuffed into garbage cans and lockers.

The waitress brought me my Coke. I thanked her and unwrapped my straw. I was tempted to do the wet worm trick with the wrapper, but decided that type of behavior was unbecoming to a Junior High School student.

I swiveled some more, and had nearly swigged the entire drink away by the time my burger was delivered. Here you go, she said and slid it to me like scraps to a stray.

I loved hamburgers. I still do. Uncle Danny always called me Wimpy, since I could eat a whole A&W Burger before I could walk. Ketchup, mustard, lettuce and tomato—I never cared for pickles and pick them off to this day. On that quiet July day, the burger seemed twice as good.

As I dabbed the last drops of ketchup from my mouth and the front of my t-shirt, the hot fudge sundae was placed before me. It was smaller than I had imagined it would be; nothing more than a teeny scoop of vanilla, with a drizzle of fudge, then a small squirt of whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. Voila, I guess. I don’t know what I was expecting, but as I said—Hope springs eternal.

I’d gobbled it up before the waitress tallied my check and slipped it my way.

Here you go, I said, It’s free—for my birthday. The waitress furrowed her brow as I gave her the crumpled card I had received in the mail, saying Happy Birthday! The Party’s On Us! It was redeemable for a JB’s Big Burger, a small drink and a sundae.

My little party over, I flipped a quarter onto the counter like some sort of leading man and stepped back into the blinding sun. The wind felt like a blast furnace as I dawdled back to the bus stop where I thought of my Big Holiday Weekend, of turning twelve—and of my life ahead filled with sunburns, wedgies, and those giants in Junior High.

KINDERGARTEN

I remember my first day of Kindergarten. Sitting on tiny chairs at tiny tables, the moms and kids filled out the registration cards. Albuquerque was such a strange and funny word to me. Mom printed it on the line for Father’s Place of Birth. It took me a minute to sound it out, but I eventually got it right. I could read by that time so Kindergarten was going to be a breeze.

Officially logged in, we moved on to what became the first of my 15 years worth of assignments. We made construction paper stoplights with pre-cut red, yellow, and green circles that were affixed with a daub of library paste— that glop that was plopped onto a paper towel with a tongue depressor and made for pretty good eating, I must admit. Not one to dilly-dally, I finished mine quickly then made an extra one just to be an ass.

When the class was excused for recess, I hesitated to go outside. There was something I felt compelled to do. I lingered behind the group to kiss my teacher Mrs. Hill on the cheek. I would rather have stayed inside and visited with her than play on the tricky bars. She looked like my Grandma—someone I’d much rather hang out with.

We had a teacher’s aide named Mr. Oreno. He would play his guitar and sing Puff the Magic Dragon and The Bloody Red Baron as we sat on the concrete steps outside on the playground. I sat on his lap one morning and read a Peanuts book to the class before we all left for a field trip to the zoo. I remember Mom’s proud, smug grin and the other mothers’ harrumphs.

There are so many memories from that tiny space in time. The scuff of green vinyl sleeping mats on the linoleum floor; graham crackers and milk when we awoke from our naps; plastic jars of colored, powdered tempera that lined the shelf above the sink. I remember the bulletin board calendar made with paper autumn leaves. I also remember running home as fast as I could past the house with the snarling, barking dog.

Funny how I went from such a precocious little kid, to an old man who can’t tell his phone from his remote. Memories of crayons and jungle gyms have been overtaken by junk mail and Xanax. People like Mrs. Hill and Mr. Oreno gave Little Me the strength and support to soar, whereas my later papers on the Periodic Table and the Peloponnesian War only made me a whiz at Jeopardy.

QUACK WHORES

One Easter, when Mark, Dave and I were little, my Grandpa gave each of us a duckling. They were fuzzy, yellow and cute as the dickens as they skuddered about our yard on Bishop Place. I suspect that Grandpa gave them to us more for his own enjoyment as he watched them from his house across the alley. They were the plain white AFLAC variety and therefore safe from any threat of his twelve gauge.

As they grew, they became sort of a pain in the ass. They were noisy and they would molt. Our yard wasn’t fenced so they would follow my mom down the block to the store. They would poop in our wading pool. They were awful.

One day, we came home to find the ducks staggering wackily around the yard. "Quaack, quoook, quuuuzhk!" they squawked. Their necks wobbled and one dragged its right wing on the ground.

Mom freaked and ran across the alley to get Grandpa, the duck expert.

They came running back and Grandpa took a gander at them. Then he burst into his trademark belly laugh. What’s going on? Mom asked. Grandpa pointed at our garden and the mound of poppy stems—stems that were completely devoid of any blossoms (or opium, if you will).

SEAHORSE. SEAHORSE, RUN!

In the second grade, I got some pet seahorses. Not Sea Monkeys® like the ones my friends had. These were honest-to-god seahorses—teeny ones, only about the size of a pinky fingernail, but genuine, bona fide hippocampinae.

I only had them for a week until they met their sad, mysterious demise, but our short time together was sweet.

They seemed too small to bury and flushing them seemed kind of harsh, so I turned to the packaging information for any wisdom. At the end of the Care and Feeding instructions,