Trauma: the Story of My Life

By COLONEL I. B. CHAOS

Trauma: The Story of My Life. This is a true story that I hope will amuse you. It chronicles the trials and tribulations from birth to present retirement. Along the way, you will find many stories of crazy and near crazy adventures I have had and want to share with you. The book is ddeicated to The Three Amigos, Doctor, Lawyer, and Indian Chief who have shared many of these adventures from kindergarten to senility. Names have been fictionalized to protect the innocent; enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463428440

Book preview

TRAUMA 1

I WAS BORN; I WAS ALMOST KILLED

The first trauma in my life that I don’t remember—do you remember when you were born?—was my birth. Of course I don’t remember, after all I was just a barely conscious tadpole in a brand new spankin receiving blanket just introduced into a world of bright lights, lots of noise, and ugly giants hovering over me; then some dude gives me a hard slap on the ass. Wait a minute, I want to go back to that nice warm, cozy place, with no noise, no giants, and plenty to eat. No such luck—here’s the cold, hard world, lil tadpole, make the best of it, and lots of luck. What I was told by my Mom some years later (could she have lied to me?, nah, Moms don’t lie), that the doctor who delivered me arrived at the hospital in an advanced state of inebriation. If only my parents in those Middle Age times were aware of malpractice lawsuits, I could have grown up rich—I could have become a contendah! In any event, they didn’t know, so I got yanked into the cold world with tongs embracing my noggin. I actually still have the forceps scars on my temples to prove what I am saying. Good thing this inebriate doctor didn’t squeeze too hard; I could have turned out to be a string bean-brained conehead.

The second trauma in line here was likely some kind of untruth. The story goes from Mom that Doctor Umbriago (Italian for drunk—just ask Jimmy Durante) broke my right ankle as he malpracticed me into this Vale of Tears; obviously he was anxious to get back to his partially empty bottle of bourbon. Many years later, my mother-in-law-to-be, trying desperately to stop her daughter from marrying a nice, but poor young fellow, told her daughter that I was born with a club foot.

Broken ankle—clubish foot—what did I know? All I remember was another trauma (are you seeing a pattern here?) having to wear an old-fashioned high shoe for my first 3 years, while my companions wore low ballet slippers, low cut saddle shoes, low cut tennis sneakers, low cut beach shoes, and low cut everythings. Actually, in just a few years, the cool boy footware was high cut boots, the really cool guys had a pocket knife sheath built into the side of the boot; boy they looked cool with your corduroy knickers. Good thing I was bigger than the rest of the other toddlers; no taunts about my shoes ever came my way—at least that I could hear.

Every time my doctor (later to be introduced was his son, Dumbo) treated my ankle—foot, whatever, he would shake his head: "How could this be, a financially disadvantaged kid with a damaged foot—ankle was smarter by far than his kid, a privileged kid issuing from the loins of an MD? Little did the Doc know that Dumbo and I became buddies in elementary school where the intellectual contrast was to assert itself big time.

Another trauma I don’t remember was that my aunt-in-residence in our modest (understatement) 3rd floor apartment told my Mom to throw me out the window, because my incessant yowling was ruining her beauty sleep. Now wouldn’t you be yowling, too, if you had just been born as damaged property, with a broken ankle (?), and gouges in the side of your head? Good thing my Mom was protective of her first born—it was a long way from our apartment to the ground! I could have ended up being a flat headed fat head. Little did aunty realize that I was merely exercising my pipes in preparation for being a powerful-voiced (READ: loud mouth) orator. Anyway, I survived this threat to my well-being and was on my way to wreak chaos in many tranquil worlds.

TRAUMA 2

MOM’S BETRAYAL

Now this one, I remember vividly; I still carry a grudge against the monster perpetrator, and more muted, on Mom’s Betrayal. Is there any wonder about why I turned out like I did to pursue an adult life with a bruised psyche? Many an enterprising psychiatrist could have tooled up with exquisite examination couches paid for by my shrink fees, if I had even known what shrinks were supposed to do for you.

Here’s how the story shakes out. My family was upper lower class, (later on lower middle class when Mom went to work) you could actually take your choice of the two, depending on which statistical religion to which you belonged (never end your sentence with a preposition). As a result, my bro and I were toy-deprived, plus everything else costing money deprived. My favorite toy was a small red hard rubber race car with black wheels and speedy design with a raised and pointed tail (Would you believe I can still visualize that car after more than 70 years have passed—talk about a bruised psyche). It was kind of like today’s hot wheels. At about 3 years into my life of trauma, Mom invited a friend and her 3-year old monster son to our house for a play date (Mom, from now on, I make my own dates, damnit!) Naturally, we were racing that little car all over the floors of our apartment. Also naturally, the little red car always won because it had no competition. I was sharing nicely, except when the monster became too possessive of MY little red car. Finally it was time for the monster and Mom of the monster to go home. The monster became—well, a monster; he was having too much fun to go home.

You guessed it, to get him out of our door, my previously beloved Mom GAVE THE MONSTER MY STILL BELOVED LITTLE RED HARD RUBBER WITH STREAMLINED SHAPE, POINTY TAIL AND BLACK WHEELED RACE CAR!

Talk about TRAUMATIZED, I stood there with my jaw hanging open on the floor absolutely uncomprehending my Mom could perpetrate such a betrayal. Is that how Benedict Arnold was brought up? Of course I never heard of Benedict Arnold at that time. What I did next I do not remember—it could not have been pretty.

TRAUMA 3

WHAT GOES UP, MUST…

A neighborhood kid supplied my next trauma, free of charge. We were outside playing with his metal six-shooter. Somebody must have yelled, Put em up! Up went his hands, and up and up went the metal six-shooter. Not yet aware of survival techniques, I stood my ground and looked up. I had a good view of that metal six-shooter sailing into the stratosphere, continued to watch as mother gravity took hold, and marveled wondrously as the downward trajectory of that metal six-shooter and my head coincided perfectly. You all know how profusely a head wound bleeds, so a bloodied prodigal son headed home for Mom to fix. She stopped the bleeding and sent me back out to play only after I promised never to yell, hands up, to a dude who was holding a metal six-shooter. Result, John Wayne was saved from one potential competitor.

After the wound healed, my childhood bushy hairdo covered the damage quite well; now that the old noggin has grown too tall for my adult do, a nice dent is clearly emblazoned on the middle of my naked pate.

TRAUMA 4

POLISH ELEPHANTS?

At the end of our street, the next trauma lurked—a cow pasture. Naturally, a cow pasture has cows. To an innocent 4 year-old, cows looked as big as elephants (now those I had seen in Tarzan movies). There I was, just hanging around the O.K. Corral, when this herd of Polish Elephants came stomping towards me. How could I tell these were Polish Elephants, you ask? Why, in the Middle Ages, before Political Correctness was invented, it was all right to specify ethnic identification when doing so clarified things. These particular elephants had kielbasas hanging all over them. I ran home to Mom and yelled (notice I never just say, I always yell excitedly—gets more attention that way). Mom, guess what, there are huge animals up the street that are picking up kielbasas with their tails—and you won’t believe me when I tell you what they are doing with them! (That last part is one of those little white lies for interest). I actually called them Polish Cows, because they were being raised to help support a Polish orphanage in the neighborhood.

Most of the people in our neighborhood were of the Polish persuasion. The saying went in our town, when you went to a certain neighborhood’s main street and yelled, Hey, Stashoo, all the males turned around. My Sicilian relatives gave me the dismissive sobriquet Saw, short for Warsaw; dismissive because I didn’t live in the Italian Ghetto of our ethnically divided home town. To complete my total Political Incorrectness, by the way, who was Alexander Graham Bellski? Why he was the first Telephone Pole, of course.

TRAUMA 5

UPGRADING GHETTOES

Shortly after the Polish Elephant scare, my family moved from a crumby apartment in the Polish Ghetto to a crumby apartment in an ethnically diverse Ghetto. Talk about social trauma! Suddenly I had Jewish friends, Irish friends, Greek friends, Swedish friends, Portuguese friends, Connecticut Yankee friends, Protestant Orphanage friends (I never really thought about living within a stone’s through of orphanages before), rich friends, average American friends, and even a friend who put butter on his spaghetti (Oh, Gross!) Talk about a mountain of diversity dumped unceremoniously on top of an innocent Sicilian boy (Where was the Godfather when you needed him?) What an integration trauma! But guess what—I made it with brains. Unbeknownst to my parents, we had moved into the poor margin of the best school district and the margins of the richest residential district in our town.

No matter how good the school, the first day was bound to be a major trauma for everyone. My new classmates were the kids of doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, business owners, insurance salespersons, and big corporation executives. How was I to know, being the kid of a cop, that I was supposed to feel inferior! Nobody told me about the classes in society and staying in one’s place, I blended in seamlessly with my upper class classmates—of course it didn’t hurt that I was smarter than most of them, bigger than most of them, and a better athlete than any of them; there, I quickly put them in their collective places. Thus began my social and academic careers—without a look backward, or forward for that matter THE FUTURE BECKONED.

TRAUMA 6

SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS

One benefit of living on the edge of the best neighborhoods in our town was to attend Robert J. Vance School, probably the best elementary school in the town. It was a State supported school, not a town supported school like most of the others. Consequently, we had the best equipment, and arguably the best teachers in