1960

[strictgrampa]

1960 Wasn't My Year

Let me set the scene for you. I was 15 years old, just starting my sophomore year in high school, in Palo Alto, California. Now that's the heart of Silicon Valley, but back then the technology boom was just getting started. I lived in a neighborhood of houses that all looked alike, so the builders put up 7 foot redwood fences between them, so we couldn't look at the cookie-cutter boredom.

But social issues didn't concern me. I had big, BIG personal problems. There were 467 people in my class. I looked okay, I was on the track team and I played drums. I should have been popular. Problem was, I was the shortest kid in the class. Notice I didn't say "the shortest guy." I was the shortest kid, period. In your sophomore year in high school, no girl is going to look at a guy that's shorter than she is. Never happen. No way.

And just to make it really cruel, Cheryl Anson lived next door. Cheerleader. Blonde. Fresh California looks, and lots of them. I drooled every time I looked at her. But when I asked her on a date, she almost ripped her lips open getting the "No!" out of her mouth so fast.

So I had to settle for standing next to her waiting for the bus in the morning, watching her get off the bus at night, and, once in a very rare while, peeking through a knothole in the fence and seeing her lounging in the living room through those great California glass walls.

I did my homework, practiced my drums, trained in my track events, asked different girls out, got rejected and that was my life. Short of living in some country where I went to bed hungry every night, it seemed pretty bleak.

My Dad had some kind of job with the federal government, and he was gone all the time. My Mom was the first female police officer in our town. She was 5'10" tall, weighed 165 pounds, and didn't take anyone's guff. We got along pretty well, but I knew where the line was and what would happen if I crossed it.

Since I didn't have a social life to take up time, I was preparing for my future. My goal was to be an orchestral conductor. Arthur Fiedler came to San Francisco as a guest conductor, and he was interviewed on the radio. He talked about how a conductor has to be able to hear a single instrument in the midst of a complete orchestra. I practiced that whenever I was in a group of people. I would pick out two people, and try to pull their conversation out and listen to it, no matter how many people were talking. That's how I heard the conversation that was the most exciting thing I've ever heard, and led to the worst day of my life. I was sitting about three quarters of the way back in the school bus. There were lots of kids talking in front of me. But in the second seat, Cheryl Anson was sitting with her best friend, talking a mile a minute and looking very upset. I zeroed in on her voice, easy because it was the only voice I heard in my adolescent fantasies. She was saying, "Mom was madder than she's ever been. She told me she was too mad to punish me then, but we'd both have three days to think about it, and then I was going across her knee." All of a sudden I could see the future better than any gypsy fortune teller. Cheryl Anson, the love of my life, the rejecter of every advance, the woman whose body I would never see, was going to be across her mother's lap, probably with a bare bottom, getting a spanking, and I was going to be looking through a knothole. I crossed all 10 of my fingers. "Let it happen in the living room." There was another knothole that looked on Cheryl's bedroom, but the curtain was usually drawn in the evening. "The living room, please." What mileage I could get out of that memory! And yes, okay, a little bit of getting even for the putdowns.

I couldn't eat. I didn't need to sleep. The homework I usually started Sunday evening was done by Friday at 8 PM. I got about three weeks of chores done around the house that weekend. Mom was impressed. I didn't care. Cheryl's appointment with her mother was for 8 PM Sunday night. At 7:50 PM I turned on my radio and snuck out the back door. I skirted the backyard, sticking close to the fence so my mother couldn't see me. At 7:55, my eye was pressed to that knothole. At 7:59, I saw Cheryl's mother walking toward the hallway to the bedrooms carrying a hairbrush. Rats! I ran along the fence to the other knothole, and beat her mother there. Cheryl was sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed in the baby doll nighties that were popular then. The curtain was open! And a millisecond after I had that thought the bedroom door burst open, and Cheryl's mom stormed in. She didn't look like she'd calmed down much in three days. She strode across to the bed, sat down on Cheryl's left, grabbed Cheryl's left shoulder and pulled her roughly down across her lap. In an eye blink the baby doll bottoms were at Cheryl's knees, Cheryl's right wrist was grabbed and pulled behind her back, and what looked like a black ebony hairbrush began a rapid series of descents to the perfect globes I'd been in love with for at least two years. Cheryl's naked bottom! A sight I thought I'd never see. And I could see EVERYTHING! Cheryl's mom was wasting no time getting her point across. That beautiful bottom was rapidly going from pink to red, and Cheryl was already crying and kicking, improving the scenery dramatically. "Take that, you stuck up bitch," I muttered under my breath. It was the happiest, most exciting moment of my life. It lasted about 20 seconds, then collapsed into rubble all around me.

Behind me a light turned on. My mother had gone to the sink to wash the supper dishes. She turned on the light, and could see me peering through the knothole in the fence. She came storming out the kitchen door. "David William Walker, what in heaven's name are you doing?" She pulled me back away from the fence and bent to look through the knothole for a couple of seconds. Then she straightened up and slapped me across the face so hard I had to run a couple of steps to keep from falling over. Then she grabbed me by the upper arm and dragged me through the kitchen door and over to the table, shoving me down onto it. Her hands slid underneath the waistband of my sweatpants and underwear, and with one smooth move pulled them down to my ankles. Then she went to the utility drawer, pulled it open, and took out the dreaded paddle - 16 inches long, 3 1/2 inches wide and 3/8 inches thick, with two rows of holes drilled in it. I was intimately familiar with it, having experienced it three times in the past. But that had always been over my clothes. Now I was getting it bare bottom. The first stroke hit me like a bolt of lightning, and things didn't get better afterwards. Anyone passing by on the street would surely have been impressed by the sounds of teenage howls coming from adjacent houses.

The next morning, Cheryl and I rode the school bus standing up. She looked at me oddly, but apparently her spanking had gone on long enough so she hadn't heard mine. Thank God for small favors. As for me, I never got within 3 feet of those knotholes, even if I was mowing the lawn.