Misbehaving In Maine

When Mom was six, one of her sisters told a story that summoned something.

Something bad.

It was Maine, after all.

Enjoy as Nintendo breaks up an 80s family.

When my great-grandmother, “Grammy Williams,” snapped her fingers to get the attention of some sinning child, that snap was the cocking of a gun.

She never raised her voice. Didn’t have to. The angrier the quieter, and that’s far worse.

On Halloween, she dressed like a witch. Off Halloween, she ran a preschool. It was called “Grammy’s House,” as in “My house, my rules,” in the sense of:

“You’re in MY world now.”

Don’t worry, she never hit us. Not with her hands. She hit us with her eyes and with that voice of hers, which would go so quiet it could only be heard by dogs and the damned.

Let's meet this marvelous woman...

My favorite laws to break when I was a child were child labor laws.

Grampa showed me how by putting me to work for the family’s blueberry-harvesting company when I was six, seven, eight, and so forth.

OCD doesn’t care about what you want.

You’ll be washing dishes with your mother, scrubbing a steak knife, and an intrusive thought will show you an image.

OCD: Oh my goodness, look at this! It’s you! You’re stabbing your very own mother!

Of course, you’d thought of stabbing your mother before, many times, but those thoughts were always yours, enjoyable because they were controllable. They weren’t intrusive. They weren’t from a mind that sounds exactly like yours, but is alien.

When I was halfway through writing school, the program promised us a famous visitor:

The journalist, memoirist, and novelist Joyce Maynard.

Unfairly, everyone said one thing about her (as if that’s all there was to say):

“She used to be J.D. Salinger’s girlfriend!”

“Who’s that?” I said.

I loved writing more than I loved reading back then.

“J.D. SALINGER!” shouted the person I was talking to. We’ll call him “Julian,” what else?

Julian screamed, “The Catcher in the Rye guy!”

“Baseball?”

I always wanted to fall in love too much.

How much?

Take a look at my weird childhood. All Disney had to do was put eyeshadow and clothes or no clothes on animals, and I fell in love.

With foxes, dogs, and lions, and when all the Bambi animals caught a raging case of mating season and an orgy was in the works, I was first in line.

The naps of deep youth:

You chewed on your bed, banged your head on the wall, punishing your parents — you were just old enough to know they loved you more than was healthy for them; therefore, harming yourself harmed them — then, after whipping your hatreds into vortexes reaching the psychic cellar door where the Devil’s always knocking, you needed a rest.

Grampa is my humor teacher. Once, at Dad’s birthday, I said to Grampa, “Thanks for making Dad.”

A twinkle lit Grampa’s eye, and he said, “It was my… pleasure.”

Gross, Grampa.

And what a joke. Tight as hell.

Here's a glimpse of my 20s, a decade my son loves hearing about.

He's a huge fan of heartache and horror.

Enjoy.