BABES and THE BABY SITTER FROM HELL

I really liked having Ron and his family around. He treated me like a buddy. We'd watch TV in our chairs side by side.(see pic on previous post) He taught me how to tie my shoes and some other things. It was nice to have someone around since my dad was always so busy. After awhile, Ron and his family moved out. We would see them once in a while. We would meet up and go dirt bike riding with them, but it wasn't the same. I was pretty lonely without them. I quickly got bored of just hanging around or going to play by myself. When I got bored, I got into trouble. How many six year old people do you know that can play by themselves without getting into trouble once in a while?

Well, I liked to read. So, I looked and looked. There is only so many times you can read a TV guide. My search took me through the whole house and I found nothing. I started looking outside and then I found it. Under my dad's workbench was this GIANT box. I know everything is GIANT when you're six, but this box was huge and it was heavy. There was a lot of magazines. A lot of car ones. I looked through a couple of them out of boredom. I looked just a little deeper, hoping to find something to read. I found this magazines that had women on the front covers. I'm not sure what I thought when I found them. Maybe I thought it would just be like the car ones. The car ones had pictures of cars and I guess I thought these might have pictures of smiling people. Maybe I thought they were selling underwear. From what I remember that is what it showed on the front.  Well, it was a WHOLE lot different on the inside. It seemed like these women liked to have their pictures taken while they were naked. I don't remember how I felt at first, but I very curious. My dad caught me looking through his magazines. You're probably guessing he was really mad and I got into BIG trouble. Actually the opposite thing happened. He was very proud of me and I was allowed to look at them. I just needed to put them back when I was done and to not have them out when we had people over. I could take them all over the house and read the stories, look at the pics, and I even learned some of the jokes. Most of them, I didn't get. Like I said before, I was the roommate and now a buddy. My dad was happy to have me hanging around. He didn't have to watch what he said around me. And for once in what seemed like a very long time, I actually felt wanted. When you're a little kid and get exposed to things like Playboy, it affects how you see women. It was very confusing. I actually told Ron that his wife, Cindy looked like a bunny from one of the magazines. From then on, Cindy was known as Rabbit.

There were a few times when my dad took me to a daycare place or an after school thing. I don't really remember what it was, but some really bad stuff happened to me there. I somehow convinced my dad that I wasn't going back there. Kicking and screaming seemed to work. He decided to get the high school girl across the street to watch me after school. She could be really nice when she wanted to be. Apparently, she didn't like little kids. She burnt my lunch many times. One time she served me tomato soup that she had burned and told me that the burnt pieces were bat wings. She tried to tell me that she was a witch or something. Her two brothers took great joy in scaring the living daylights out of me as well as breaking my toys like my pop guns, Tonka trucks,etc. I didn't have very many toys and the sitter would tell my dad that I broke them.  It seems like I got hurt a lot whenever she was taking care of me. She was trying to teach me how to ride a bike. I would get on it and she'd let go or her brothers would try to run into me. One day of these lessons sent me through a neighbors yard. I don't know why, but I could stop. The brick planter stopped me when I smacked my face into it. I cried, they laughed. When my dad came home, she was really concerned about the bump on my head. My dad had me lay down on the couch with some ice on it. He laughed and told me that I looked like a boxer. I had quite a shiner. Didn't find out until a doctor's visit a few months later that I had fractured my skull. It was a small fracture just above my left eye,  but since I seemed okay, it was okay.
During the summer, the same sitter thought I should learn how to swim. Living in Southern California, we were fairly close to the beach. On better days, she took me with her brothers and I'd play in the surf right at the shore line. I'd also build sand castles and dig for sand crabs. This was fun, but the day came when I need to learn how to swim. She took me by the hand and walked me out on the jetty. Next thing I know was she picked me up and threw me into the water. I wasn't a swimmer. I could dog paddle, but I sure couldn't swim. I remember seeing the light hitting the top of the water. I tried to dog-paddle towards the surface. The water stung my eyes and I kept getting tossed in the undertow. I started dog-paddling and now I was digging in the sand. I looked around and saw the surface. I pushed off the sand and tried again, but the same thing. I tried again and again. No success. I remember being terrified and the feeling that my chest was going to explode. I died that day. I was under the water, I couldn't breathe and everything went black. I never knew how I got out of the water.