Memoirs of an Italian Geek

By R. Santi

Memoirs of an Italian Geek is a collection of stories that tell the ongoing tale of the childhood and adolescent escapades of a third generation Italian-American Geek as he deals with the tribulations of life, technology, and friendship throughout the last few decades of the twentieth century. Starting with his earliest memories of the golden years, before school began, and on through to his graduation from high school, the endless impact of his friends and family influences continue to keep our Geek in a constant state of change and often confused. Dealing with personal issues and other cataclysmic changes, our Geek learns that not everything can be prepared for, and sometimes the most meaningful changes occur without warning. Confronted with the challenges of academic achievements (or lack there of) and endless extracurricular chaos (usually inspired by girls) our Geek fights a constant battle between trying to stay afloat on the seas of trouble childhood and not drowning in a coming of age riptide. Memoirs of an Italian Geek is the tale of this journey through churning and often unfriendly waters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 11, 2003
• ISBN: 9781462077144

R. Santi

R. L. Santi lives in Connecticut. This collection of memoirs is the reflection of eighteen years of Italian upbringing in modern times. R. L. is also a Windows programmer, a part time adjunct professor, a musician, and a self-proclaimed coffee addict. He can be reached at http://www.rlsanti.com or [e-mail].

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CHAPTER 1

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Childish Warfare

I should have been beaten more as a child. These days, parents seem to think that if they rationalize with their children, then their children will miraculously choose to do the right thing, out of some higher sense of logic and honor. The problem is kids are simply animals; they neither understand honor nor cherish logic. If they had either of these tools, they wouldn’t get into trouble in the first place, but since kids are constantly causing some form of chaos, it’s obvious they aren’t equipped for making rational decisions. They’ve also already learned that being bad is more fun than being good. Rationalizing doesn’t stand a chance with kids, so other options have to be brought into play. From my own experiences, there’s no better teacher than fear.

Fear is a major motivator and it’s something that kids seem to forget about, some time before their fourth birthday. In most cases, it’s the fear of punishment that will educate a child in the values of right and wrong. For my older sister, the fear of a leather strap taught her what was acceptable and what was not in our family. She caught the lesson just one time on her backside, and after that the fear of the strap was more than enough to keep her orderly. For some unknown reason my logical mind lost its inherent fear about six minutes after leaving the womb.

My upbringing was influenced by a unique chain of events for about the first ten years; unique, even for a family in the midst of the drug and sexual revolutions of the 70’s. Truth be told, the 70’s rolled past our house without much impact, aside from clothing and color selections. My domicile could be loosely characterized as a 1950’s Italian suburb, with some modern lapses. I am one of the two children born to my parents. My sister, Traci, is six years older than I am; I’ve been told that I was actually born four years later than I should have been. Seems I was late for my own conception, but better late than never, I suppose.

My parents were still married when I was born and remain married well into the 21st century, which is another unique trait in modern families. In typical Italian fashion, my mother’s father lived with us since before I was born. In typical modern fashion, my mother went back to work shortly after I was born—this was decidedly non-Italian, as most married Italian women didn’t work after they had kids. The higher cost of living in America during the 70’s required two working parents, leaving me in my grandfather’s care during the weekdays. Thus began my upbringing by four parents.

My father worked a lot of odd hours yet I saw him almost every night for dinner and on the Sundays. I know he expected discipline from his children, but I’m not sure how he would have enforced it, aside from having married my mother. My mother was the disciplinarian in the family and she often took the form of judge, jury and executioner. Her job was to deal with the mess my grandfather made of me when she got home from work. My grandfather was never a disciplinary figure, being the most playful of the four, and he had me during the day. Lastly, Traci took her role of older sister quite seriously whenever possible. This is not to say that she was overly bossy, but with a six year lead on me, her Suggestions would carry a lot of weight with me. She would Suggest a lot of things over the years and I took heed of most of them.

The biggest and most constant opponent of my punishments was my grandfather. It’s well documented that grandparents are chronic spoilers of grandkids. Many a wise man and stand up comic alike have noticed this. Some people have even alleged that aliens had substituted a new and happy human in place of their parents when they became grandparents. There is quite a difference between the parents you knew and the grandparents that your children know; they are usually not the same people! Add to this phenomenon the additional spin of a live-in grandfather. It was as if I had my own group of lobbyists to fight for me and enact my every whim in a well-greased Congress. My mother would attempt to punish me in a variety of ways, but would actually end up fighting with her father, as he would try to protect me, which would let me off the hook.

Most people think that a four year old wouldn’t notice such power plays. Maybe most don’t, but I certainly knew what was going on. Cry to Grandpa was the biggest weapon in my arsenal and it was nearly perfect. It almost always saved my backside from all types of pain since I usually got caught doing bad things at home where Grandpa could always be found. Oh, I would occasionally miss out on a Tom and Jerry episode, or get sent to my room early, but that was about all my mother could get past my grandfather. My unlearned mind quickly learned that I could get away with a whole lot more than I should have been able to.

And what sort of things would a master criminal of age four hope to accomplish? Little and stupid things, of course! Wanting to stay up later, trying to avoid chores by watching more of the Flintstones, skipping meals due to lack of hunger and other such things. My mother would order, I would go wah and my grandfather would leap to my aid. It taught me I could get away with things that I usually wouldn’t be able to.

Someone wiser than me has said, All good things come to those who wait. I don’t know who said it, but I know my mother had heard it before, because she opted to be patient with me; at least she decided to pick and choose her moments of punishment. One day, when I was four, I was out with my mother and sister in a local mall. This was a normal outing; I’ve spent many a Saturday afternoon shopping, which is another unique trait of my upbringing. I find that I am used to waiting outside of women’s dressing rooms without complaining. While we were shopping in a particular store, we came upon the toy department. Being a kid, this was like dangling…well, a toy in front of a child. Bam! There was one of the coolest toys I had ever seen, right there on the shelf! Wish I could tell you what it was, but I never got it, so I don’t really remember it at all.

One my mother’s cardinal Rules of Life was never throw a tantrum [in a store]. If someone investigated this Rule, the in a store was basically there for effect—no tantrum would ever really be tolerated, but if I had one in a store, it was exponentially worse than one thrown in private. A supporting Amendment to this Rule was a clause stating that I could never play with a toy in a store if we hadn’t paid for it yet. To a four year old kid that was used to getting his way through his grandfather’s intervention, the first Rule doesn’t much matter, but the Amendment acted as the catalyst to this issue.

Whenever we were in a toy department, there were always kids ripping open packages and playing on the floor with the latest game or toy. Their parents were nowhere to be found so they were usually out of control. And this was a form of paradise to other kids like me! An endless supply of toys, just waiting to be abused? Not having to hear no, you can’t have that and not having to clean up after myself? Utopia! Standing in the way of playful bliss was this small and simple Amendment of no playing with toys in a store if we hadn’t paid for it yet, and here was the toy of my dreams (for that minute) staring me in the face.

Since I was used to arguing with my mother, I thought I’d give it a whirl and try to get this toy. My mother told me no. As most kids would, I opted to test my boundaries a bit and see if I could force the toy into my hands. My mother was adamant in her refusal, telling me No. Traci was getting annoyed, due to the pause in our normal shopping. Since she had been down this path before, she knew that while no might be arguable, a No was final and absolute, so there was no point in arguing. I pushed and pushed, and when I was over the line I kept right on going until I had landed squarely in the middle of a tantrum. I had gotten myself so worked up that I didn’t even realize that I was now in a world of shit.

I had broken a Cardinal Rule! Even if had I had noticed what happened, I would have figured that my grandfather would come to my rescue when I got home, but in reality, I was oblivious to everything by this point. At any rate, I wasn’t even home yet! The only thing I was aware of was the toy that I had become so desperate for. If I was a little more observant, I could have seen what was coming next.

Even as early as 1977, child protection agencies, which were starting to get their power base solidified, frowned upon spankings. It cannot compare to the power these agencies have these days; if a parent slaps a child’s hand in public to stop him from stealing candy, they could end up under serious investigation. For the most part, my mother would try to avoid making a scene whenever possible; I really think this is where the no-tantrum thing comes from. If a kid is throwing a tantrum, it’s always a public scene. In the middle of this wild and loud scene of my own creation, my mother tells me that she has a Surprise for me out in the car.

My eyes dried instantly, the snot that had started coagulating in my nose disappeared, and I was smiling in no time! I was instantly obsessed with going to the car. When would we be done? What was the Surprise? Did it take batteries? Did Traci have one already? When would I get it? Even my sister was sporting a bright-eyed expression with a wide smirk! I was getting a Surprise and that had to be better than the toy of my prior affection. Maybe my Surprise even had a kung-fu grip and everything! I wouldn’t even have to share it with the other kids in the store—it was all mine!

I hemmed and hawed and fidgeted and waited while we finished our shopping. It seemed like forever until we finally got through the last store’s line and headed out to the parking lot. I would have sworn we walked around the whole lot twice before we found where we had parked. We arrived at our 1971 Chevelle, with the two big bench seats, and I scrambled into the back seat to look for the Surprise.

It seems that I had two surprises waiting for me in the back seat. The first was my mother climbing in the back door behind me, and the second was the ass-whooping that she proceeded to unload on me! And well deserved it was! In a bold move, my mother got her shopping done in peace, ended the tantrum, and taught me a hell of a lesson. Traci got to watch one of these episodes from a distance, learning that when it came to punishments, it was more fun to be a spectator than a participant.

I learned a couple of things that day. I was reminded that my grandfather was my savior against most punishments, but he was limited to our house. If he wasn’t there, he couldn’t help me out in this type of situation and he rarely left the house. I also learned not to throw a tantrum again. That was the obvious lesson, really. If I threw a tantrum, I’d get a whooping. If I didn’t throw a tantrum, not only would I save my backside a thrashing but I would also have a chance of getting what I wanted. I learned that if I wanted to avoid punishment again, I shouldn’t misbehave. It might also be easier to not misbehave rather than trying to get out of a punishment after misbehaving. This is the closest to a set of morals that most kids can achieve before high school, but it is usually enough to be called a good kid.

Things would have been easier if I had applied this experience to the rest of my life, but I hadn’t yet learned the commutative property of lessons yet. In fact, after my grandfather died, my mother became a bit mellower about some things and worked more—my sister was given the task of watching me after school but she wasn’t as strict a person as our mother used to be. Truth be told, Traci had just as much influence as my mother, but in a more subtle way. I just think I would have been less of a problem if my mother could have gotten a few more deserved whacks on me—it would have saved me a lot of trouble as I got older.

CHAPTER 2

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The Golden Years

The happiest time of my life was between the ages of four and six. It’s not that I can remember everything about that time period, but given the lifestyle of those ages and from what I do remember, it had to be the best time of my life. I’ve often heard Baby Boomers say that High School was the best time of their lives. Generation X (and Y) will typically look back on college as their best years. I went to both high school and college and I still don’t understand what these people are talking about.

When kids are between four and six years old, they’re in the golden years of their lives. For the most part, they wake and sleep when they want to. Granted, they might be forced into a nap from time to time, but the day is theirs. Since my grandfather was still alive and tasked with watching me during my golden years, I recall having a constant companion, which I’ve never had since. I had a watch dog, playmate, and provider all wrapped up into one person from when I woke and until my parents came home and tried to give Grandpa a rest. I remember, on some nights, that he went to bed before I did.

I would get up and have some form of breakfast, usually in front of the TV, which both my grandfather and I knew was forbidden. I was only supposed to eat at the kitchen table, but I liked TV, and Grandpa liked me, so while my mother wasn’t home the rules would change a bit. What I do know is I got some good TV time in during the weekdays. During the late afternoon of most weekdays, a visitor would find Grandpa running, while carrying a highchair with me in it, out of the living room so neither of us would get caught being in there. One thing was certain: they had some great cartoons on the tube back in the day before news and variety shows took over both the morning and afternoon programming. After breakfast, it was play time, which could bring any number of things. Regardless of the season I would be turned loose on the yard, marking the start of the day. In New England, where we got a full variety of weather between all four seasons, I found spring to be the best of all seasons. Something about the spring air in my hometown could instantly wake you up, even years after I had moved away and came back to visit.

For the majority of these years, the rest of the day would include lunch and more play time. Maybe a nap or some quiet time with a good array of afternoon cartoons. During rain or sleet, playtime was inside; otherwise, the day would run between stuff in and out of the house. It was during the stuck inside days that Grandpa taught me how to count in English, Italian, and with playing cards. My grandfather was a big fan of poker, as a number of older Italian men are, and thought I would do well to get my education started with a bit of home schooling. After all, playing cards resemble flash cards and a majority of the cards have regular numbers on them. Flushes required color-pattern matching; pairs required shape-pattern matching. Straights taught me how to count, which my math teachers would eventually call cardinal order. Black Jack taught me how to happily add to 21 and unhappily add to sums as high as 31. Since totals over 21 meant I lost the hand, there wasn’t much to be happy about when I added to 22.

As I was born in November, I was flung into the schooling system during September of 1979, when I was four years old. My parents, for reasons they’ve never disclosed to the likes of me, didn’t bother to mess around with nursery school; I couldn’t have agreed more. Who needed all of those strange people messing around with you when you’re not even four? There’s plenty of time for that later in life. No, I was shoved directly into kindergarten, which marked the start of my educational career. Truth be told, it wasn’t really that bad. Kindergarten was always one half of a regular school day, and I was lucky enough to be in the afternoon sessions so I didn’t have to get up early!

Actually, kindergarten was mostly good, aside from forcing me to spend less time with my grandfather because I was at school. While there, we painted, we played with clay, and we used paste when we made art with paper. We weren’t allowed to eat the paste and there were no lead paint chips to suck on, so it was an overall good experience. Our teacher, Mrs. Morris, was a formidable teacher. She wasn’t stern or anything like that, which I thought was great for that class. The school must have liked her as well because she not only taught my sister, six years before my class, and she continued teaching for an additional 20 years after my class entered first grade. Not many people can stay in a career that long these days! She knew how to treat kids; she was great at making us feel like we weren’t at school, so for at least the first year, it was still fun to be there.

And it really wasn’t school yet. I remember that there were times when we would have class and try to recognize our numbers and our alphabet, but there wasn’t ever any pressure put on us for it. I had already learned how to count, and so long as I remember that Ace, Jack, Queen, and King, weren’t really numbers, I could keep up without worry. Letters were easy to recognize too; you just had to know what the shapes meant. For snack times, we ate whatever we brought in from home; I don’t even remember getting an option to swap snacks with other kids, like you do in later grades, so no one got suck-ered into giving up cookies for fruit. There was a complete lack of pressure at every angle, as long as you didn’t hit girls and didn’t try to eat the paste.

There weren’t even conflicts over blocks or toys, like most parents would have nightmares over; my class almost always got along well. For some reason, most of the kids got attached to a favorite toy early in the year, and everyone else just seemed to respect that and wouldn’t try to steal other kids’ toys. I loved this big wooden stop light that they used for some of the car and block sets. The light itself was about a foot long, but had a pole attached to it allowing it to stand about three feet tall. It had a lever on the side that let me move a wood blocker from the painted red circle to the green one, so only one light was ever lit at a time. No one else ever wanted it, so I never had to protect my conquest. As a kid, I was completely fascinated with electricity and stop lights, but I don’t think any of the other kids shared my interests in this.

I also believe that it was during this golden age that I had the largest amount of blind faith and freedom in my life. Life was easiest for me during these years: do what you were told to do and things usually went well, so I blindly followed what any one of my four parents told me. Things weren’t really that complicated at this age and I hadn’t yet grasped the complicated concept of freewill. Given my level of naivete, this also allowed me to have a certain level of freedom, since I just mostly played, as a child. While most people think that blind faith and freedom would conflict with each other, they never did to me. I really think that having both blind faith and a sense of freedom at the same time was what warped my brain into the logical dualistic machine that it would eventually become.

Take for example the first time I met Mr. Morton, my grade school principal. My mother worked in the school system at the time, so she knew the entire staff of the school, as well as most of the students. My sister Traci was enrolled at the school at the time and was completing the fourth grade. Actually, my year in kindergarten was one of the only times that Traci and I were in the same school at the same time; we later ended up at the same college while I was an undergraduate and she was finishing up her MBA but that was a bit of a fluke. During my kindergarten year, while she was in fifth grade, we still never saw each other during school hours because we were in opposite sides of the school building. Since Mom worked as a cafeteria/recess monitor, she was able to keep a direct eye on my sister when her class would go to lunch. Even though kindergarteners didn’t go to lunch—only being in the building for half of a school day—she would stop by my classroom after the last lunch shift to check on me. When Traci went on to the town’s middle school, my mother took a new job, as a reading aide for seventh and eighth grade, so she never got to watch me that closely at school, which I really didn’t mind.

For whatever reason, my mother brought me with her to the school during a school day in the spring before I entered kindergarten. I guess she wanted me to look around the school so I wouldn’t be freaked out by the place that fall; in my mind, I still had the rest of spring and summer before starting school, so I really didn’t pay too much attention to the place while I was there. She took me to meet all of the teachers and staff that she worked with. She showed me the library, the cafeteria (and which workers there would give me candy every morning), the kindergarten rooms, and the gym. We went to see all of the good stuff that any kindergartener would care about. It was during the tour of the library that I met into Mr. Morton for the first time.

Mr. Morton was well over six feet tall and was born wearing a tie. He had a full head of grey hair—I didn’t see his hair that day, because I couldn’t see over his kneecaps—and had a great, deep rumbling voice that was extremely distinct. His voice had this unique quality that could stop a student in their tracks, make them confess and repent for all of their sins, just by saying hello. I was a little over three and a half feet tall at the moment, give or take some inches. I was a short, runty, wiry thing at the time—if my grandfather succeeded in forcing me to eat when I didn’t want to, I would have been fatter and less wiry, but he let me skip meals—so needless to say I was small. After my mother introduced me to Mr. Morton, he asked me, So, what do you think of our school here?

It’s OK, I replied.

Well, I’m glad you like it. Your mother tells me that you’ll be starting school here this September? he asked.

Yeah, well, I thought I would give it a try, I replied.

If I were older, I would have gotten a swat to the back of my head from my mother for that comment. If I were older, Mr. Morton might have made a mental note that I was a flippant runt and that he should keep an eye on me. But, because I was only four, I could deliver a line like this without a care in the world. As it was, Mr. Morton mumbled an Um, Good, and ran out of the room to laugh his ass off. My mother had to turn away so I wouldn’t hear her laughing, because she didn’t want me to think that I could get away with comments like these forever. The fact is I was just being honest. Not only did I have the freedom to say something like this, but I really had enough blind faith in my parents—and Grandpa who had always protected me—that if I told them that I didn’t like school, they wouldn’t make me go. I completely believed in their omnipotent abilities and was certain that there was nothing that they couldn’t do for me.

Like many memorable parts of my life, I never really knew when this one was going to end. In particular, this golden time of my life ended quite unexpectedly and, as with other hardships that can happen in life, it ended with a decent amount of pain involved. The end of my golden age was marked by a three-pronged attack. The first was my grandfather dying on Christmas night when I was six. Mostly unexpected, and certainly painful, I lost my playmate and protector at an early age. It also meant that someone else would be watching me more often. The second stroke was starting school fulltime a couple of months before I turned six. Once school starts in a person’s life, it doesn’t end for at least a decade; to me, the end result of this was learning that my days were not entirely my own anymore and never really would be again. Even after the formal school years ends, work begins and a job or career takes the place of school during the weekdays. The last attack came in the form of a story that has kept me amused for a number of years. While I didn’t know it at the time, a door was about to get slammed in my face, ending my time in the golden years forever.

My mother took Traci and I on a set of errands one day, a few months after Grandpa died. We went all over the place, with the last errand being a trip to the local branch of our bank. I always liked going to this particular bank office because they had a huge aquarium and a lot of colorful fish to watch. While I was usually a natural pain in the ass—being endlessly curious—I wasn’t a tap on the glass and wake the fish kid, so I didn’t bother the tellers; I just liked to watch the fish swim. Anything else that I saw, I wanted to take it apart to see

how it worked—much to my parents’ annoyance—but for the most part, I let living animals be.

When we got into the bank, I made a beeline for the tank, just like I always did. My mother, instead of getting into line to get her banking done, opted to follow me to the tank. Given that we’d been out for a bunch of hours and she was now at her wit’s end with my constant touching of toys and other merchandise, she said to me, You watch these fish and don’t you move from this spot!

And so I did just that. I watched the fish. I was still young and was still clinging to the last shreds of the blind faith that helps to keep us child-like in our hearts. Besides, I liked the fish. My mother finished her banking and called Traci over to talk to her by the counter with the deposit slips. When Traci went to talk to her, I continued to watch the fish; I never left the tank until my mother was ready to leave the bank, because she usually kept me waiting forever while she talked to her friends at the bank. It never made any sense to leave something fun until my parents called me at least twice.

What I didn’t notice then was the amount of time that had lapsed between when my mother called for Traci and when she told me that she was ready to leave. I didn’t find out how long it really was until a couple of days later. My mother forgot to take me with her and my sister when they left the bank the first time! Traci gave up the story, mostly because she thought it was funny that she was the one that she remembered me, or else I might not ever have known about it. Mom forgot about me and the fish and was in the car ready to go, when Traci asked her, Where’s my brother? causing my mother to panic and run back into the bank. She completely forgot that I was watching the fish and never thought that I wouldn’t follow them when she told Traci she was leaving. She also forgot that I was told don’t move from this spot! I was just doing what I was told and I almost got stranded because of it; obviously blind faith wasn’t the best thing to live life with! It’s not that I made a miraculous discovery that day, but it was around this time that I started to ask the simple question of why rather than just mindlessly doing what I was told to or supposed to do.

My life didn’t get horrific as this period of blind faith ended, but life did start to get more complicated and certainly more complex; I’ve had many happy times after these years, but this period of time was special and unique. In looking back, I can label these years as the best of my life; we have no frame of reference while we are living them and years go by quickly, even when we’re young. While hindsight is often thought of as being selective in what it allows us to see, I’ve found these two years to be the most innocent and carefree. Before this time, I don’t remember a specific experience or event; after these years, I started getting burdened with responsibilities and life was no longer carefree. If someone asked me, If you go back in time, what time in your life would you go to? it’s these years that I would want to return to. After all, how can you improve on gold?

CHAPTER 3

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Surviving Female Cooties

While growing up, I never understood the connection between girls and cooties, like most boys did. I understood that getting cooties was bad; that was an obvious fact. If someone told me during recess that I caught cooties from a girl, I not only knew it was true, but I also knew that I would keep those cooties forever. Well, forever or until that kid forgot that I had cooties. I agreed with the boys and girls in my elementary school classes: Cooties were something no one wanted to catch.

Cooties were extremely bad. Girls, on the other hand, were not. At least they never seemed bad to me, not even as early as kindergarten. I’ve always liked girls. I’ve always wanted to be with them. I thought that they were more fun to talk to, provided that they weren’t trying to put makeup on my face or make me play with dolls. I never understood much about boys my own age, really. To me, their ideas always seemed to