Time Capsules

Prologue 1984 I pulled down my pants in First Grade during an assembly at Hilldale School. It was the second day of school, and my classmate, Andrew Raia dared me to do it. The school assembly that day was on Mexican customs. We had just learned how tortillas were made. As a youthful and enthusiastic young Mexicano couple joyously demonstrated one of their wedding dances to our entire school, one might say one might say I stole the show by showing off my genitals to grades K through Six that day. Perhaps somewhere in Mexico, that too was indeed a custom, though I do not think our principal, Mrs. Heller, quite saw my interpretation through the same lens. For some in the audience, like the school gym teacher , Mr. Bryndza, it was something to laugh at. Kids being kids. I know I would laugh. I still laugh when I think back. For the less tolerant in the audience and tenured teachers in the audience - like the sixth grade teacher, Ms. Stubbs - it reinforced the need to practice safe sex, which was just then gaining traction due to the up and coming AIDS pandemic at that period in 1984. The witnessing of such a tasteless spectacle was likely to propel the old warlock to preach straight-up abstinence - up to, and possibly including, castration, or, the removal of one’s genitalia. In a perverse way, the whole scene was most likely to persuade her to thank Jesus. “Thank you, Jesus! My David would never, ever, do what that dirty boy just did!’ I looked straight into the eyes of Mrs. Walsh. Sho sternly whispered, “Oh, TommyTommy! No!” Or maybe it was more of a slow-motion, “Ohhhh nooooo.” I do not recall the reaction of my cheery classmates from my row, or of those in the audience, who sat in neatly organized sections according to grade level. Andrew’s rapid-fire laughter was all the reaction I needed. It was fuel for my young soul. I never heard Mrs. Walsh raise her voice in all my years at Hilldale Elementary School. It was impossible to crack the woman who taught our class to read about Mr. Fig and Co. daily. For that, she deserved a page To make such a statement about a long-tenured First Grade teacher, more or less places her in the Book of Saints that my parents gave me for my First Holy Communion. “Oh Tommy! No!” I had cracked the uncrackable. I would love to be able to say that it was the last time I ever heard a tone like that. I’ll leave it at that. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. April 2, 2018 Freehold, New Jersey “Can you change the baby?” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Spring break’s going to end at this rate!” Katie ran downstairs. “What? I didn’t hear you. What happened?” “The baby pooped.” “So. Why didn’t you change her?” “Come on, I don’t do poop,” I reminded her. “You know this. There are two things in life I don’t do. Puke and poop.” “Tommy, come on. Really?” My wife and I had had that exact discussion verbatim, literally hundreds of times over the past nine years. Katie cleaned Anna’s behind with baby wipes. She breathed through her nose. I laughed. She sounded like Darth Vader. “See?” she said. “It’s not that bad.” “Then why are you holding your nose like it’s mustard gas if it’s not so bad?” “Because, if I don’t have to breathe it in, then I don’t want to,” said Katie. A look of disgust painted my face. My wife was a real trooper. “You are capable of changing a diaper you know,” added Katie, grabbing two more [KB12] wipes. "You just choose not to.” “But what if I was born with an inability to hold my nose the way you do? Did you ever think about that? Or are you selfishly thinking only of yourself as usual?” I asked. “Food for thought.” She laughed. “If you’re not going to help me, at least get me a plastic bag.” She wrapped up the soiled Huggies. Each diaper had Sesame Street characters on the waistband. Part of Elmo’s face was covered in feces. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Marriage is an epic adventure, with no handbook on what to expect. If someone had told me that, nine years in, fecal matter would become routine conversation in our household of five, I’d have said they were nuttier than a five-pound fruitcake. As a passionate married couple, who were always look for ways to spice things up in the bedroom, we spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the bowel movements of each member of our budding family. Katie and I included. If I’m being honest, it was a real libido killer. Shea, our oldest, was playing on the front porch of our townhouse. Her younger sister, Grace, was busy covering the sidewalk out front in rainbow chalk. She drew images of teddy bears. With knives in their head. “Grace, I love your teddy bear,” I observed through the screen door. “But why did you have to draw a knife in its head?” The precocious child shrugged her shoulders. I wondered, was I supposed to be disturbed by the images on the porch? Should I have been bothered that I wasn’t bothered? At what point was I supposed to alert authorities that one of my children might have the same tendencies as a teddy bear serial killer? Anna rocked contently in my arms as she sucked on her green pacifier. Random thought of the minute – at what point does a sweet baby’s life become tainted by the sometimes-disgusting world we live in? More important, where had Katie disappeared to? “Come on!” I shouted. “We’re never getting to Disney at this rate!” ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Katie ran downstairs. “Sorry, I had to pee. Are the girls in the car?” “No. I didn’t want to leave the car running without one of us sitting in it.” In the past nine years, the world of fatherhood had opened an entire universe’s worth of paranoia. I, the cocky, confident go-getter that had worked his way up the corporate ladder in the medical device field, had become riddled with fear, starting approximately ten seconds after my wife said she was pregnant with Shea. One such deep-rooted fear of mine was that one of the girls would put the car in drive while I wasn’t there. Through the years, I had envisioned numerous scenarios coming out of that fancied fear. It had stemmed from an episode of The Simpsons, when Maggie high-tailed the neighborhood with the family car. The “What If’s” hatched in my ears. What if one of my kids shifted the car and got plowed by a Mack truck on Route Nine? What if Shea (or Grace), got run over as the SUV shifted forward or backwards? What if I got arrested for negligence? What if I got run over while trying to stop someone else from getting run over? I would have to spend the remaining days of my life reading the Bible from Trenton State Prison. Every day, I would be forced to have sex with a tattooed cell roommate named Brutus. Worse, what if I liked the sex? “Tommy? Earth to Tommy. Hello?” “What?” I shook my head awake. My eyes were fixated on the girls. “Let’s go,” said Katie. “Alright, sorry. I was just thinking about some last-minute business.”