When I was a kid, I was a coward. I was afraid of drowning in the Puget Sound. I was afraid of killer bees. I was afraid of falling off of cliffs I never saw. I was afraid of demons and God’s wrath in equal proportion. I was afraid of disappointing my elders, afraid of getting in trouble, and afraid of doing the wrong thing. I was afraid of getting hurt or injured, mostly because I’d disappoint my elders and get in trouble for it. I was a real panty-waist.
When I was eight years old, my family moved for the eleventy millionth time; the four of us took up residence in one bedroom of my grandparents’ two-bedroom townhouse-style apartment in Woodinville. This was a big upgrade for us. For a while, after one of many evictions, we’d been living in our van parked in my aunt’s driveway in Everett. The van had a fold-out couch in the back where my parents slept, and my sister could recline one of the captain’s chairs and sleep relatively comfortably, but I was stuck sleeping in the driver’s seat, which could only recline a few inches, so I spent a month sleeping sitting up. I’d crawl out the door each morning with all the aches and pains of an old arthritic man. When the van got repossessed right out of my aunt’s driveway, she let us sleep on the floor of her living room, and nearly every day we’d be woken up by her four-year-old son who thought it was hilarious to stomp on our heads.
When the stress of it all became too much, my mom had an argument with her sister and we left. While my dad was out for the day, my mom headed out the door with Lenae and me in tow, and we walked nearly ten miles to some friends’ house. The next day, my dad’s parents reluctantly agreed to let us stay with them for a while. My grandmother moved into my grandfather’s bedroom, and we all moved into her room.
It would be an understatement to say they were not excited to have us there, and I can’t blame them. They suddenly had to support a family of four on their fixed income of Social Security and a small military pension. My dad wouldn’t allow my mom to work because God told him she shouldn’t—God must have told him that my mom would leave him again if she could ever afford to do so. My dad didn’t have a job either, but he was perpetually one miracle away from swinging a deal that would make him a millionaire.
We were allowed to take a bath once a week, there were constant arguments about my dad making long-distance phone calls as soon as my grandparents would leave the house, and at one point, my grandfather suggested that we should be able to get by with just one square of toilet paper for each visit to the bathroom. As another cost-saving measure, sheets were hung at the bottom of the stairs and in the entrance to the living room to avoid heating the whole apartment. My mom began drinking hot water instead of tea. It was like living during the Great Depression.
When tuition was too far in arrears, Lenae and I were asked not to return to our private Christian school that year, but the administrator did hook us up with inexpensive homeschool curriculum, so my mom began teaching us at the kitchen table. When she realized we could get through a day’s worth of lessons in two or three hours, she began to add extra work. We learned all the states and capitols, the names of all the presidents and their wives (my favorite mnemonic device was “Tyler Polk
Through it all, my sister Lenae and I had each other. We would play together outside as much as we could. We’d shape living quarters for my G.I. Joe action figures in a pile of sand we found in an overgrown “play area” surrounded by a chain link fence. We’d take long walks down the bike path along the Sammamish Slough, catching caterpillars and other bugs. We collected natural clay from the riverbank and crafted small statues. We were explicitly told, though, to avoid going too far in the southerly direction, because according to my grandparents, we could be kidnapped by the “beaners” who lived in shacks near the path, doing nothing other than drugs and growing vegetables fertilized with their own shit.
Lenae and I would search for striped rocks in a bank of river rock along the roadside because we had a superstition that if you found a striped rock and threw it over your shoulder, and if you then couldn’t find it again, your wish would come true. My wish for a million dollars shattered the passenger window of a passing pickup truck, and when the man stopped to yell at us, the birthmark surrounding his left eye was so red I thought he was bleeding. I was terrified, of course. I searched for the stone I’d thrown to prove it wasn’t me, but I couldn’t find it. He couldn’t find it in his truck either, so I guess I still have a million dollars coming my way.
When she turned eleven, Lenae started babysitting for some kids down the lane to make money for my dad to steal from her. She also stopped playing with me. She began to spend her time alone in quiet corners absorbed in Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High books instead of catching caterpillars with me. When I’d ask her why she didn’t want to play, she simply said, “I just don’t.” I felt like I’d lost my only friend.
Eventually, I found some other kids to play with. A family moved into one of the identical townhouses a few doors down, and Jason and Melissa were roughly the ages of my sister and me. They were trashy, foul-mouthed kids. They shared the bedroom that corresponded with the room my entire family shared, but theirs had bunk beds and the walls were covered in promotional posters for Budweiser, Rainier, and Miller beers. They listened to heavy metal music, which every good Christian kid knows is Satanic and full of subliminal messages about worshiping the devil and doing drugs that will instantly kill you and send you to Hell. Jason was dirty, Melissa was enormous, and the two of them would yell, curse and swear at each other until they were in full-on fistfights on nearly a daily basis.
While I thought of Jason and Melissa as uneducated, lowbrow, trashy people, it didn’t occur to me at the time that they were actually better off than my own family. Their whole family wasn’t sharing one bedroom and mooching off of an elderly couple like my family was. Their dad had a job and paid rent. They could rot their teeth on candy and soda while we would water down Kool-Aid to make it last.
But my family was great at pretending. To the outside world, we were happy, righteous, intelligent and well-adjusted—the perfect family. To onlookers, the Hollisters had nothing on us. We were taught at an early age not to share our problems with the public. We didn’t talk about being poor, or our shitty home life, or our emotionally abusive father, or our misfortunes. Somehow, we were convinced that this was all a sign of our greatness; we were merely being persecuted by the devil because God had such big plans for us. We were early adopters of the “fake it ’til you make it” philosophy.
Jason and Melissa—rough, tough and ill-behaved—scared me. But, they were kids to play with nonetheless. And they had bikes.
Jason could ride his bike with no hands. One afternoon, on Melissa’s bike with a banana seat, I finally learned how to do it too. I was still a little wobbly, but if I got going pretty fast, I could take my hands off of the handlebars and keep riding up the drive as long as I didn’t have to turn at all. I was so excited about my new skill that when I saw my grandfather navigating his big green Lincoln up the drive, I decided I needed to show off. As he passed me, I started riding really fast next to his car, and then slowly took my hands off of the handles, grinning from ear to ear. I couldn’t really see the look on his face through the reflection in the glass, but he slowed his car down a little, no doubt in astonishment at my amazing skills. I kept pace with him all the way to his carport and then stopped to wait for him to get out of his car to congratulate me.
“If you ever fuckin’ do that again, goddammit, I’m gonna whip your ass!” he shouted.
My heart skipped a beat. My grandfather was always a little gruff, but he’d never yelled at me before. He must think riding a bike with no hands is really dangerous, but he was clearly underestimating my skills. Regardless, his red-faced threat shook me to my bones. I stood there slack-jawed for a minute not knowing what to say. I parked the bike and walked away, staring at my feet. I just knew that Jason would end up getting me in trouble! Later that evening, my mom explained that it wasn’t so much that I was riding with no hands, but that I was doing it right next to his moving car that had gotten him so riled up. It was stupid and dangerous, and I promised never to do it again. I was afraid that I’d be the cause of us getting kicked out.
One cloudy day, Lenae actually decided to come out to play with Jason, Melissa and me. The four of us went over to an empty lot across the way where there was a clearing between some weeping willow trees that made for the perfect stage for “playing pretend.” Jason was going to be a stunt man, Melissa was going to be a movie star, Lenae was going to be a singer, and I pronounced that I was going to be a souvenir. That’s right, a souvenir. I’m pretty sure I was thinking of “entrepreneur,” but in my mind, a souvenir was a silver-haired and distinguished man who was rich as hell. I was going to be Conrad, the souvenir. I was disappointed years later when my first actual souvenir was a cheap frisbee with “Lake Chelan” printed on it.
We arranged the debris in the clearing in such a way that our imaginations could make the leap from sticks and old tires to a furnished room, and we began to discuss what was going to happen with our characters. You say this, and you go over there, and then you come in and say this, and I’ll do this. It was like planning out the plot of any of the soap operas that their mom watched every day. But, it didn’t take long before Jason and Melissa were engaged in a heated argument, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs, because Jason didn’t agree with what we were supposed to do. He thought his character was the most important and he wanted the rest of us to revolve around him, but the story arc we’d come up with didn’t cast him as the leading man. He was pissed.
His anger didn’t stop at just Melissa. He started shouting abuses at all of us. He picked up a long branch of a weeping willow and started swinging it in figure eights like a whip, threatening us with bodily harm.
The other kids backed away, but I stood still.
“You’d better all get outta here, or I’m gonna whip you!” he yelled. I stood still and silent while Lenae and Melissa backed further away, begging him to stop.
Jason advanced toward me, his willow branch whistling in the air. I watched it arc one way and then another. I could imagine it cutting my face. I stood still.
“You’re gonna get it!” Jason threatened as he got dangerously close.
“Go ahead, do it,” I replied. “I’m not backing down. You’re gonna have to whip me.”
Jason stopped advancing when the tip of his weeping willow branch was slicing the air a few inches from my face. I stood still.
“Are you crazy?” he asked, still swinging.
“Do it,” I said. I stood still.
We were in a face-off. His willow branch continued to cut the air back and forth, and he’d make gestures as if he was going to advance, but he didn’t. I stood still.
And then, in that moment, standing still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to stand frozen in the face of danger. It wasn’t enough to simply stand my ground. In that moment, I took a step forward.
“What are you doing, you crazy sonofabitch?!” Jason kept swinging the switch, but he took a step backward. “You’re going to get whipped in the face!”
I took another step forward. He took another step back. I stepped forward, and he stepped back. Arms at my sides, I began walking steadily toward Jason and his weeping willow branch and saw fear begin to show on his face. He wasn’t afraid of me; I wasn’t threatening him. He was afraid that his bluff was being called. He didn’t want to hurt me; he wanted to have power over me. He realized that if I got hurt, it would be his fault in the eyes of witnesses. He wouldn’t be able to say it was my fault, that I made him hurt me like so many abusive husbands tell their battered wives. I wasn’t thinking of any of that. I fully expected to receive the full force of the willow switch, but I simply advanced on the source of my fear and saw the monster itself become afraid.
Jason dropped the branch and literally ran away.
“Man, you’re crazy!” he yelled over his shoulder. I watched him run into his house and slam the door. I stood there trembling with adrenaline.
There’s an idea in Existentialism that “you are what you pretend to be.” It stems from a related idea that we are what we do. Our actions illustrate who we really are. Our decisions illustrate our core values. A man may feel like a coward, but if he pretends to be brave—if he continually chooses to do brave things—then he is actually a brave man.
That day under the willow tree, I pretended to be brave. And I have pretended to be brave ever since.
Oh, sure, I’m overly analytical. I do conduct risk assessment when confronted with any number of situations. I look at things from every angle, and I do cost-benefit analyses on the smallest things. But, quite often, I walk face first into dangerous situations, risk be damned, just because I can. I have been hurt. I have been scarred. But I have never been broken.
