Leave Town

I invite anyone who may benefit from it to sift through the detritus that is my life for any lessons that can be learned. I always give it people straight. I was given no advice, sage or otherwise, when I was growing up and so tried to learn from what I thought were everyone’s mistakes. 

In my town, the culture was such that we didn’t learn much at all about the lives of the adults around us. Everything was a secret and presumably a shame despite the fact that no one seemed to lead a salacious or even interesting life. People were born, got up, went to work, came home and ignored their children, went to church on Sundays, took on debt, and died in the same 30 mile radius. Maybe you went to Philly once.  No one was getting evicted, everyone was a homeowner. Affairs were happening, but usually across the county or state line, in any case to far away for anyone to care. People either didn’t care to hide their status as a drunk or did such a poor job of it that everyone assumed that they were okay with it. It wasn’t a disease in those days so we didn’t dwell on curing it. Everyone was working class so poverty was not scandalous. And yet as children we were always shuttled out of rooms away from grownup talking lest we hear something (really nothing it turned out) we weren’t suppose to. Like paternity. 

For a small community there were a fair amount of women who thought no one knew who the fathers of their children were. Sadly the only real concern came from their kids. And let me tell you, nothing colors the lens of a child looking at its mother more than the looming thought that this woman didn’t know who got her pregnant. And when the child finally learns how pregnancy is achieved… We really thought it was something that could happen without your knowing. Well, without either party knowing. Surprise. But then when around 3rd grade someone drops the birds and bees right on you all you can think is- is this going to happen to me? Am I going to have any control over this getting a baby situation or am I going to end up as angry as my cousin’s mom is all the time because she’s always alone, broke as hell, and her house is small and “ain’t nobody trying to help her with the damn kid”? 

I don’t remember people doing much of anything with their kids. Mostly they were trying to find ways to have us mind each other so that they could get on with whatever they did when we weren’t around. For a lot of men this meant looking at a porn mag (Cs with Ds was popular) or, for the more tech-minded, watching a video rented from the back section upstairs at Suds and Sodas behind the curtain. Never did we peer so hard as when trying to catch a glimpse of a video cover when that curtain flapped open for a split second. Catholic School Girls! Women coming out of a shower! Tan lines! No matter what though, adults seemed unhappy and if they were laughing about something it always seemed to be the misfortune of someone else whose fortune was only slightly or momentarily worse than theirs. I watched adults like a hawk looking for clues on how I could avoid ending up like them. Here’s what I had come up with by the time I was around 10:

Don’t go to poor people’s church. 

Don’t get married.

Don’t eat greasy food.

Don’t have children.

Leave town.

Don’t spend all your time with your family.

Don’t watch daytime television.

Don’t sit around too much.

Don’t lose your teeth.

Note the lack of positive directives aside from leave town. Leave town.