Olentangy Circle

When I was 3, we moved from Pittsburgh to Akron, Ohio, and we lived there for a few years in the late 70s.  We lived in a house on the corner of a cul-de-sac called Olentangy Circle.

Our house was very unique.  The family room had a recessed area with built-in sofas around the fireplace that we called "the pit", and upstairs we had a playroom with built-in bunk beds, and a built-in Snoopy doghouse that had foot holes in the sides so you could climb up to the bunk beds.  The light in the room was a stop light on a lamp post next to the doghouse.  We never were allowed to sleep in the bunk beds because we were too young.  My mother used the lower one as a changing table for my little brother.  The other thing about this house was that tornadoes were always coming through, and the brick wall around our backyard patio was always getting swept away.  Also, Akron is known for its rubber, so the Goodyear Blimp, which my brother called the "New Year's Bimp," was always flying over our house.  Also, we lived very close to an open field where hot air balloons would take off and land every weekend.  Our favorite was the Pabst hot air balloon.  I didn't know then how I would grow to love Pabst as an adult looking for cheap drink in Chicago.  There were forests everywhere, lots of places to explore.  We had a long, steep driveway that was great for coasting down on our Big Wheel.  We were allowed to pick strawberries and rhubarb and mint whenever we wanted and we were allowed to play in the neighbor's life-size playhouse.   Also, Chrissie Hynde's parents lived on our street, so sometimes she would show up in a really big limo and we would be playing Star Wars with her nephew and everyone told us she was famous, but we didn't know what that meant.  We were just happy to be playing with Ian's Star Wars figures because all I had to play with were the loose bricks from our torn-down patio wall and five severely jacked up Barbies.

For all of these reasons, Olentangy Circle was kind of a sweet place to live. 

[me and Mike in the Pit

Oh, look -- we're playing with boxes.]

So, while all this rubber was flying overhead, and we were living an idyllic-type childhood on Olentangy Circle with the lead singer of the Pretenders coming over for dinner and what not, down the street, Jeffrey Dahmer was just graduating from bludgeoning kittens for fun, to freeze-drying Filipino boys for dinner.  We didn't know that then, but it's good that we weren't Filipino, because we trotted past his house quite frequently on our little adventures.

We had another pass with death when we were in a pre-school carpool with the son of a man named Fred Milo.  Mr. Milo drove a Mercedes and he was very attached to the cleanliness of his floor mats.  In the winter, we had to take our boots off and put them in grocery bags in the trunk before we got in his car.  Mr. Milo is now serving a life sentence for hiring a hitman to kill his brother Dean because he thought Dean's body had been replaced by a robot.  It's a good thing we weren't robots, because things could have turned out a lot worse for us than just having to ride to school in a Mercedes in our socks.

So, besides all the murder, Olentangy Circle was OK.

Well, there were some other things, like, for example, on the first fall day when all the neighbor men were out raking leaves, which is how all Ohio men spend their Saturdays, my dad saw a group of neighbor men talking on the street, leaning on their rakes.  He went down to introduce himself.  The only man my dad knew in the group was our next door neighbor, a Methodist pastor.  Not included in the group was Penny's dad.  Penny was my friend.  I liked her for lots of reasons.  First of all, Penny moved to Olentangy Circle after us, and she told me that before she lived on Olentangy Circle, she lived in a hole in the ground like Bugs Bunny, and I thought that was so neat.  Second, Penny's dad drove a LeCar (it said so right on the side!).  Third, Penny had an outy belly button.  So, Penny really had it going on.  The other thing about Penny was, she had dark brown skin.  I asked her about it once and she said, "I'm not dark brown.  I'm black."  I knew my colors pretty well, and I knew that her skin was dark brown, not black, but I let her have her way about it.  Even if she didn't know her colors as well as I did, she was still my friend, and I knew that because we sat together on the bus.  Our morning bus to kindergarten also had older kids on it, and the 5th grade boys who sat behind us called her "monkey" and "n****r lips."  I was jealous that they had nicknames for her and not for me, until one day she told me that the names they called her weren't nice.  Penny never cried or anything.  We just sat there while they called her names.  But I still wished I had a nickname.  It turns out, when my dad went down to talk the neighbor men, they were having a very serious conversation, which my father walked away from in short order.  They were talking about what night they were planning to burn a cross on Penny's lawn.  It's a good thing we weren't black, because that meant Penny's family had to move away from Olentangy Circle.

So, besides all of the cannibalism, robot murder, and outlandish racism, Olentangy Circle was all right.

Well, except for Caroline Christiansen.  Caroline Christiansen lived in the house behind us, and she was what you might call "a bad egg."  Caroline Christiansen had a younger brother named Peter and a younger sister named Sarah, and they may have had parents, but Caroline Christiansen ran the show.  Caroline Christiansen was always siccing her dog on me.  Roofie was just a little terrier, but he was really barky and he scared me.  Caroline Christiansen knew that I was afraid of Roofie, so she never missed an opportunity to let him attack me.  One day I was going to a birthday party.  I had on a little dress and my mom had to change my brother's diaper, so she told me to wait downstairs and not get my dress dirty.  I went downstairs and I saw Caroline Christiansen outside, so I decided to go out and talk to her.  Caroline Christiansen had Roofie on a leash.  I was a naive little dumbshit, so I said, "Hi, Caroline Christiansen.  I'm going to a party today, but I'm not supposed to get my dress dirty."  Caroline Christiansen let go of the leash, and Roofie screeched over to me and started barking at my ankles and running around me in circles.  The leash got tangled on my feet and Roofie kept running around and around me till the leash was wrapped all the way around my body and I was lying on the ground with Roofie barking at me and biting at my face.  My mom came out and untied Roofie.  Caroline Christiansen didn't say anything.  She just came over and took the leash from my mom.  I got in trouble for getting my dress dirty.

Caroline Christiansen was in 5th grade.  She was kind of like an adult, so I always did whatever she told me to do.  Like, she once told me to use hedge clippers to cut off a neighbor boy's hair when he wasn't looking, so I took the gigantic hedge clippers in both hands and cut off all the hair on the top of Mark's head.  It's a good thing he had huge 70s hair, or else I really could have hurt that poor little kid with those huge hedge clippers.  I got in a lot of trouble for this, but no one ever knew that Caroline Christiansen had told me to do it.  Caroline Christiansen also told me to jump on the back of the ice cream truck, which I did, and the bumper fell off into the street with me along with it.  I got in a lot of trouble for breaking the ice cream truck and getting pretty badly hurt in the fall off a moving vehicle, but no one ever knew that Caroline Christiansen had told me to do it.

Suffice it to say, I was a really dumb little kid.  And come to think of it, if you were 10 and you knew a 6-year-old as gullible and willing to take bold action as me, why wouldn't you tell her to do stupid shit?  One day Caroline Christiansen rang my doorbell and told me to put on a knit hat. The hat was filled with dog poop from the neighbor's dog, Buffy. I was smart enough to not put on the hat. That made Caroline Christiansen mad, so the next day, she came over and told me that she had a club but I couldn't be in it. I begged to be in the club, so she told me to come out to the back of the house. There were a bunch of older boys standing in a circle.  She told me that I had to take off my pants if I wanted to be in the club.  I knew I wasn't  supposed to take off my pants, but Caroline Christiansen told me I had to, so I did.  Then she told me I had to take off my underpants too.  I knew I was supposed to take off my underpants even less than I was supposed to take off my pants, but Caroline Christiansen told me I had to if I wanted to be in her club, so I took off my underpants.  When I took them off, one of the boys grabbed them out of my hands and ran away.  Being fully de-pants, I squatted down to the ground just in time to see my mother looking at me through the kitchen window.  At first she was squinting at me, but then I saw her jaw drop and she started screaming and swearing.  She was yelling so loud that by the time she got to me, still squatting in the lawn with no pants on, all the older kids ran away with my pants and underpants.  That night, when we went to pick up my dad at the airport, my mom made me sit in the front seat with my dad while he explained to me about how I wasn't supposed to take off my pants in the outdoors, even if it meant I couldn't be in certain clubs.  I think we had this conversation again when I was 16.

So, besides all the Filipino-boy-eating, fratricide, lynchings, and child-on-child pervert-ism, Olentangy Circle was a great place to raise a young family. As long as you're not a black Filipino robot who's afraid of dogs.

Incidentally, Caroline Christiansen, Jeffrey Dahmer, and D.B. Sweeney all went to Revere High School together.  How's that for a class reunion?!  Just think of all the uses for a toe pick in that crowd!

Thumbsucker

I went to the dentist last week.  I don't mind going to the dentist because I really like my dentist.  His name is Doug.  He doesn't let anyone call him Dr. [such-and-such], just Doug.  Doug has been going through a nasty divorce for years, so every time I see him, he asks me for legal advice -- I'm laying down and he's got his face right up in my face and both of his hands in my mouth and that's the position that I prefer to be in when I'm offering legal assistance.

Doug is pretty chill.  He wears acid-wash jeans and a Hawaiian shirt at the office.  The first time I saw him, I found his attire a little unusual, but now that I am used to it, I think it's completely fine.  His whole job is to get right up top of you and dig around in your piehole which is really pretty gross.  Why shouldn't he be comfortable?

After I get my teeth cleaned by Tammy, who is really good at being a hygienist because she talks a lot but doesn't ask you any questions, Tammy says, "OK, Julie.  Doug isn't here today.  Today it's Dr. Pete."

Today it's Dr. Pete!  That's sounds fun!  I have never met Dr. Pete before, but that's OK.  I wait for him to come in.  I'm running my tongue over my professionally cleaned teeth.  Then I notice that have a wedgie.  And I wonder if my stomach looks flat when I'm lying in this chair.  Do dentists check you out when they come in, or do they just see you for your teeth and gums?  Is it intimate for them, putting their faces right up in your face?  Do they even look at your face?  Are they like gynecologists, except with mouths?  Do I have time to do something about this wedgie?

Dr. Pete appears and he is not anything like Doug.  Dr. Pete is picking up the slack in the dentist wardrobe department.  He is wearing a white coat, which indicates to me at least one failed suicide attempt caused by his dismay at not being a medical doctor.  In addition to, and somewhat overshadowing the white coat, Dr. Pete is sporting a giant reflector/mirror on his forehead.  It is so over-the-top that I laugh out loud.  This will obviously result in Dr. Pete's next suicide attempt.  And, as with all things in his life of not being a medical doctor, he will fail.

OK, so Dr. Pete is a tool, but that's OK, because there's no concern about cavities, and Dr. Pete coming in to visit my mouth is just a formality.

While he's looking around in my mouth, I think about the days when they'd leave you in a room alone with two trays of cleaner in your mouth for like half an hour and it was supposed to taste like bubble gum or blueberries and the whole time you were just dying to spit it out and puke all over the walls.  I did that once.  I gagged and the trays fell into my lap.  I was a little kid.  They just filled the trays back up and jammed them back in my mouth.  It was so primative.

I sucked my thumb till I was five, which is apparently a long time to suck your thumb.  People started to talk.  Then my dentist said to me, "Julie, it's time for you to stop sucking your thumb.  Can you do that?"

No.

Well, I want you to stop sucking your thumb.  I'm going to call you on the phone in three days and see how you're doing with that.

I don't have a phone.

I think you have a phone.

OK.

I really liked sucking my thumb, but Dr. Murphy told me to stop.  I took him very seriously.  I wanted to be a good girl, so I stopped.  Right then and there.

Three days later, I was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the phone rang (I guess we actually did have a phone).  My mother answered it and she handed the phone to me.  It was the first time anyone had ever called for me.  Three days is an eternity to a five-year-old.  I had forgotten all about Dr. Murphy, and my thumb sucking days were already two days behind me.  I was a new woman.  I didn't understand what was happening.  I thought it was Santa Claus.  I was really hoping it was Santa Claus.

Hi Julie.  This is Dr. Murphy.  Have you stopped sucking your thumb?

Yes.

Good.  That's very good.

And that was that.  Except, it was too late.  The damage was already done.  The very next day, I bit into an apple and I lost my first tooth, and then all of my teeth started falling out.  Kids don't usually lose all their baby teeth this early, but I am very advanced.  By the time I was in 3rd grade, all my baby teeth were gone, and the new ones started raging forth from my gums.  We moved from Akron to Iowa City and we went to a new dentist, and the dentist was like, what the fuck is the matter with your kid's teeth?  My mom said she had no idea what he was talking about, so the new dentist reclined the chair back and had me open my mouth, and my mother said my teeth stuck straight up into the air.  The lore is that my front teeth were like, perpendicular to my face.  She gasped and felt like a terrible mother and she said, "Oh my God! What can we do?"

[Try not to get distracted by my little brother's
bow tie and the fact that we look like we are
headed to some sort of ethnic dancing festival.
Just focus on the teeth]

GAAA!

Maybe you're thinking, that's not that bad.  So your teeth were a little weird.  It's your clothes we're concerned about.  Fine.

[Also, I was, not suprisingly if you read this blog, kind of spazzy]

BAM!

Look at those fucking things!  If they let me put my thumb in my mouth one more time, it would have offset my center of gravity and I'd have to start pushing my teeth around in a wheelbarrow.

Let's agree that if my parents hadn't gotten my teeth fixed, it would have been straight-up child abuse.  I mean, I wasn't even allowed to have Wonder Woman Underoos because they were flamable (what clothes, besides fireman suits and wrinkle-resistent button-down shirts from L.L.Bean aren't flamable?) (and if you're dumb enough to set your kid on fire when he's just wearing his underpants, you deserve to shell out the cash to pay for his skin grafts), so if they were so worried about what kind of underpants I had on, why weren't they paying any attention to what was going on in my face?  If that were your kid, would you really need a dentist to tell you that her teeth were jacked up?

Suffice it to say, I was then doomed to a course of aggressive orthodontia for a number of years.  When I was in 3rd grade, I started with a retainer; when I was in 5th grade, I got braces and a head gear to wear at night with hooks and ropes and pulleys and rubber bands; and by the time I was in 6th grade, my braces came off, so I was actually pretty lucky to have the Billy Bob thing over with sooner rather than later.  And let me just say, I know that I was fortunate.  Not everyone who needs braces gets them (like, for example, this snaggle-toothed, but otherwise pretty hot!, 25-year-old I met in Mexico last December, whose parents prefer to vacation in Cancun rather than give their kid a leg up in the dating world).

It was always so embarrassing when people would say, "You have such a pretty smile," and my mom would dryly say, "That's her $5,000 smile." Then I would immediately stop smiling and go straight to feeling bad about all the money they spent on my dumb teeth.  Just think of all the different kinds of flamable underpants that would have bought.