I Have a Scar or Two

In the spirit of one of my favorite scenes in "Jaws", a listing of my significant scars, and how they happened:

1. Under my chin. Age five. Split it open on Thanksgiving day, after taking a swan dive off of the coat pile on my parent's bed. 14 stitches, no novacaine. The term "papoose board" still makes me wince.

2. Right shin. Age ten. Fell on a bowhead garden rake hidden in the grass while playing wiffle ball, creating two deep puncture wounds. Six stitches in each puncture.

3. Left foot's second toe. Age Twelve. Accidentally dropped a 25-pound weight plate on my foot, smashing the toe. No doctor. The toe still looks a little...odd.

4. Left eardrum. Age thirteen. Severe perforation due to an unlikely combination of a beetle, bridge jumping, and an inevitable abscess. Wost pain in my life, by far, until they gave me morphine. If you're wondering why I keep asking you to repeat yourself when we're in a noisy room, now you know.

5. Right cheek and forehead. Chicken pox. Don't scratch them, really!

6. Left wrist. Age 21. No matter how drunk you are and how annoying the sorority girls may be, I still advise against putting your clove cigarette out on your wrist after they tell you it smells bad.


What about yours?

Lesson #2

[Somerset, NJ - November 1975]

When we were young, my brother and I occasionally spent time with three of our male cousins. Our parents got along very well, and had a talent for getting somewhat tipsy and leaving us to our own devices. Age-wise, we covered five sequential years, leading to corruption from the knowledge of the older boys and shenanigans from the immaturity of the younger ones. In other words, we made a perfect band of rascals. What one of us wouldn't think of, another one would. So one day we decided to have a little stunt show. Our conversation went something like this:

"Let's do a pulley-run between two trees", someone suggested.

"Those trees over there look good", said Mark.

"They're too short," said Jeff. "What are you, a girl?"

"Hey, what about those?" exclaimed Rick, pointing to a pair of fifty-foot-tall birches.

"Yeah, those will work," said Chris, "but our rope isn't long enough."

"We've got a longer rope, it's just not as thick," I chimed in. "Think it will hold?"

"Of course," everyone said.

So we hooked everything up, tying the long thin rope between the tops of the swaying trees, fastening the rusty pulley to one side. We were just about ready to go.

"That end isn't high enough," mentioned Jeff, "You won't get any speed unless there's more slant to the rope."

"Maybe we should lower the other end."

"Sissy."

"Raise THAT end."

"Won't it break the tree?"

"Trees are strong, stupid."

We raised the one end. Now we were really ready to go.

"Who should go first?"

"Maybe Ken…he's the youngest…he's the lightest."

"Nah…somebody tougher should test it out."

"Rick is the oldest. He should do it."

"Ok, I'll do it. It better not break though," said Rick.

"It won't!" the rest of us exclaimed confidently.

So Rick climbed up to the top without hesitation, grabbed unto the pulley, and set out with gusto, flying down like a bat out of hell, or at least out of Somerset, New Jersey. The rope broke, of course, and so did the top of the tree. Rick plunged to the ground and landed flat on his ass with a resounding thud. Thankfully, he was alright. Jeff however, didn't fair so well, after he started laughing hysterically at his older brother's landing. In fact, Rick commenced beating the snot out of him, and the rest of us piled on quickly. I think we were interrupted by a distant call to dinner. It smelled like hot dogs, and those would hit the spot. We'd had a busy afternoon, after all.

Lesson: If it looks like it might break, it probably will. Any decision made by a group of more than two is suspect.

Lesson #1

[New Jersey - 1974]

I went to all sorts of interesting places as a child. You know…monuments, museums, amusement parks, and petting zoos. I remember one petting zoo especially well. They had the usual stuff: ponies, donkeys, chickens, rabbits, llamas, and baby goats. I really liked the baby goats. They were having a grand old time playing with each other, running around sideways, jumping way up into the air, and butting each other on the head as they made strange little goat noises. This looked like fun to me! So, being the type of kid that I was, I decided to try it myself. I'm sure that the baby didn't quite understand my intent when I first approached with a devilish grin and my head way down low. Goats are smart though, and he figured me out quickly. Too quickly in fact. In a lighting burst of super-ruminant speed, he reared up then butt full bore right into my head, knocking me flat on my ass. I can't remember if I was actually knocked unconscious or just slightly dumber after that. Those goats are serious about their play.

Lesson: Know your adversary's abilities before confronting them. Be wary of anything that looks cute but has horns.

The Past

[Bloomfield, NJ - Christmas 1971]

There was a time when nothing else mattered to me except what was happening in the moment. A time when I didn't worry about what I had done wrong yesterday, and I didn't waste my days waiting for tomorrow to come. This life is nothing more than a collection of moments - moments that will be anticipated or feared, cherished or endured, and celebrated or regretted.

I hope that this space will allow me to share some of my life's moments with you.

A Beginning

[Bloomfield, NJ - February 1, 1970]

I was born in a hospital in Montclair, NJ, on February 1st, 1970, to Martha Ware Williams and William John Williams. My father was a telephone repairman for Bell Telephone at the time, and my mother was a busy housewife, having given birth to my brother Chris in 1967.

We lived on Carteret St., in Bloomfield, NJ, back then. I was taken home to a nice room with choo-choo train wallpaper, I've been told. I don't have memories from the first few years of my life, more like recollections of stories told to me by my parents over the years. I liked sucking my thumb. I liked only two types of baby food: meat and bananas. I was a good little monkey. I also had a fascination with blue fuzzies. Yep, blue fuzzies. I had a very soft multicolored blanket that I loved in a similar manner to the way Linus (of Peanuts fame) loved his blanket, only I took it a step further.

You see, the blanket had squares of many different colors, but there was one color, a cerulean blue, that I especially loved. I would pick at that color, pulling the strands and gathering them into soft little balls that can best be described as "blue fuzzies". How I loved those blue fuzzies. I'd hold them next to my face and coo. They were so soft and blue! I think I may have eaten some of them. I'd fall asleep at night nuzzling a collection of soft blue fuzzies against my face. To this day, there is a specific feeling I get if I am extremely peaceful and comfortable as I fall asleep. It is the blue fuzzy feeling, and there may be nothing in the world better than it.

I should mention that my parents became quite perplexed when they found that a perfectly geometric pattern of holes had mysteriously emerged in my blanket. I imagine that it was a similar feeling to what a farmer experiences when he first stumbles upon a series of crop circles in his cornfield. Something was very strange indeed, some alien force was at work. They shrugged and assumed I must be some kind of savant/freak. At least they tried to comfort themselves with the hope that I would have some savant-like qualities, which might counterbalance this particularly freakish one.

I also remember that I had a big head. It's not like I looked in the mirror and exclaimed, "my god, look at the size of that thing!" No, it wasn't like that. It was just that no article of clothing seemed to be able to fit over it. I can still remember my father trying to pull my pajama top off. It would always get stuck on my head, and I'd end up suspended in the air, swinging helplessly as he tugged futilely on the top in exasperation. It was pretty funny to me actually, and I think we ended up making a game out of it.

I also liked to stand on my head when I was a toddler. We had a little jungle-gym in our backyard, and I'd go outside and hang upside-down by my feet, resting the top of my head on the ground. The world was so interesting from that perspective! I remember staring up at the sky, pretending that up was down, and I was hanging SO high up above a peculiar (cerulean) blue void. I spend a lot of time doing that. It's possible that I may have compressed my neck a bit, but more likely that I merely counteracted the stretching it was getting from the nightly pajama-pulling sessions with my dad.

I remember liking my brother a lot. One of my fondest memories from that time in my life is how we would go play in my dad's phone truck when he came home for lunch. He came home for lunch nearly every day…he really liked seeing my mom. She tells me that when they were first married sometimes she would cry in the morning after he left for work. So they'd eat together and we'd go play in the truck. Man that was fun…one of us would sit in the drivers seat and "drive" while the other one would "repair" one little trinket or another with bits of extra wire and tape. I still remember the smell of that van…old vinyl, WD-40, and electrical tape.