I mentioned at the end of the last post that everything changed when I hit third grade. It is the inflexion point in my journey from Baby Boomer to Gen-X (originally referred to in media as the “baby bust”). To be fair, I was born in 1961, which is demographically speaking the last year of the baby boom. So I was only barely a boomer to begin with. Unfortunately, the story of my third-grade year will have to wait until part 4, because I need to tell a few more dad memories to set it up.

When you are a middle child in a group of six, any time you get to spend one-on-one with a parent is special. I always craved attention (see “Monty Kangaroo” in part 1), and perhaps because Jupiter and Saturn are both in my seventh house, I have always thrived in one-on-one situations. That might also have something to do with me becoming a massage therapist late in life, a career I truly loved. But the few times I got to go somewhere with my dad alone really stand out in my memory.

In the summer I turned four my dad needed to run an errand. He probably was walking toward the front door flipping his keys into his palm making a rhythmic jingle sound that always signaled his imminent departure. He called out, “I need to run to the florist, anyone want to come?” I jumped up, and it was just me going, it turned out. The florist shop was in a white stucco stand-alone building near the west end of Main Street with beautiful shrubbery out front, blank gravestones on display in the rear, and bright white plaster sphinxes on either side of the front steps. The sphinxes were fairly new at the time, very beautiful, with perfectly formed bare breasts (something you probably wouldn’t see today). As we approached the steps my dad said, “Wait out here, I’ll be right out.” People don’t leave their four-year-old children alone out in front of a store these days, but 1965 was a very different time. Anyway, he took longer than I expected — OK, any length of time is an eternity to a preschooler, I guess. I got bored, and I kept looking at the sphinxes. Those perfect breasts! I had to try one. Just as my lips clamped onto the right nipple of one of them and the plaster of Paris began to melt onto my tongue my dad appeared on the top step. “Son!” he blurted. I pulled away, knowing I was going to get a pants-down spanking when we got home. “Get in the car,” he said, guiding me with a large, warm hand on my crew cut head. Oh, boy. I was in for it now. In the previous post I described one of the few times getting a spanking actually made sense to me, which is why it stands out in my memory. This incident stands out not only because I still remember the taste of cool plaster in my mouth on that bright summer day, but also because I did not, in fact, get a spanking! Perhaps it’s because he was quietly laughing the whole way home. He never mentioned it to my mother, and the incident was never spoken of again.

That fall our town went crazy with football fever. The team was having an undefeated season and was on track to make it to the state championship if they won their final game. For reasons I will never know, my dad took me to the game by myself. He was a teacher at the high school, and I think he was there in a chaperone capacity, which might explain why he didn’t bring the whole family. I had never been to a real football game before, and although it was a modest, small-town stadium, the lights were bright and all the stands were full of people. I was in awe. I vividly remember he bought me my own bag of peanuts sealed in paper that I got to tear open myself. It was heaven! We were sitting in the stands near the center of the field when all of a sudden I heard a loud series of booms from behind the opposite bleachers. I grabbed his hand and shouted, “Oh, no! A giant is coming!” He laughed and said, “No, son, that’s just the marching band.” I had never seen a marching band, or even heard of one. I was simply beside myself with excitement as they approached. My town had one of the best music programs in the state, and this was a very well put-together ensemble marching around the field in formation. When the trumpets blared my entire body tingled. Wow. At the end of the game, which we won, the team carried the coach around on their shoulders while the crowd went berserk. Undefeated! They did win the state championship, and the star quarterback went on to have a brief professional career.

On my seventh birthday for some reason my dad took me by myself to a college town about ten miles away. My birthday happens to be the Fourth of July, and I was accustomed to family gatherings that had nothing to do with me. I did always enjoy the fireworks, but having your birthday on a major holiday means your celebration is kind of an afterthought most of the time. This was special, just me and my dad going to a movie on campus (I’ll bet it was cheap: we were very poor). He even took me to Baskin Robbins to get an ice cream before the movie. I got a double scoop of chocolate mint chip, my favorite. This was a very special birthday indeed! We stepped outside and I went to take my first lick of the majestic cone. Plop! Both scoops fell off and splatted onto the hot pavement. “Don’t worry son, I’ll get you another one.” The guy inside had seen everything through the front window, and replaced the cone free of charge. I have always been really careful with ice cream cones since then! Walking across the parking lot towards campus, my dad’s lit cigarette accidently burned the middle knuckle of my left middle finger. I screamed like a girl. He was very apologetic. He quit smoking soon after that, and I wonder if this incident helped motivate him. He had been a compulsive smoker for many years. Anyway, we went to see “The Time Machine,” a very strong movie for a sensitive kid like me. It terrified me, but I loved it. It was my favorite birthday ever.

In those days the original Star Trek was creating a sensation in prime time. And the captain was named Kirk, like me! I thought he was handsome and amazing. No one else in the family was really interested, but my dad watched every episode. At seven, I didn’t really understand much of what was going on, but I loved cuddling up next to him in the big easy chair. I could ask questions and he would do his best to explain things to me. I do remember one time these scary aliens suddenly appeared on screen and I let out a high pitched scream. “Oh, I’m sorry son, I didn’t realize that would scare you,” he said, but he knew how sensitive I was, and prone to nightmares, too. I had a vivid imagination.

Which brings us, finally, to the Story of the Mummy Box, a week-long saga that became a permanent entry in the family lore. My older brother liked to build plastic models, the kind you buy in a box and put together with glue. Usually it was cars and airplanes, but this time he got a replica of Boris Karloff’s character in The Mummy, a 1932 film. I had never heard of the movie, but we had an old 1940s National Geographic magazine that featured ancient Egypt, and the picture of the face of an unwrapped mummy haunted my nightmares already. So my dad told the story, including how they had a sarcophagus replica out in front of Grumman’s Chinese Theater for the Hollywood premier. He then proceeded to do a spot-on impression of the mummy — arm out, feet dragging, groaning — which of course petrified me. And the picture on the box the model came in was really creepy, with bits of bloodstain on the tattered rags on the mummy’s arms. I couldn’t bear to look at it, frankly. Every night for a week I woke up screaming from nightmares of the mummy. My brothers teased me. My parents and older sisters tried to reason with me, to talk me down from my hysteria, but I just couldn’t get over the terror of imagining easily outrunning him, only to look over my shoulder to see that he’s always still coming. After about a week of this nonsense my dad, exhausted, came into the room I shared with my two brothers (who were fed up) and held up a rosary. He pointed at the cross part and said, “Son, this is a crucifix. I’m going to hang it right here on the wall. If the mummy comes into the room the crucifix will cause him to crumble instantly into dust.” He said it with all the seriousness he could muster while my brothers probably rolled their eyes. The mummy box sat on the dresser to the right in full view. I couldn’t bear to look over at it, but it’s presence burned a hole in me from across the room. I tried in vain to fall asleep. Everyone else fell asleep, but I was being tortured by the thought of the mummy box just a few feet away. Desperate, I decided to do something I had never been brave enough to do before: creep out of the bedroom while the whole house was asleep. Slowly, painstakingly, I tried not to make any of the floorboards creak as I carried my pillow through the family room and the dining room, arriving at the middle living room where I planned to sleep alone on the couch. I had never before slept alone in a room, but I was willing to go that far just to put some distance between me and the cursed thing. I arranged the pillow against one of the armrests and began to lie down. Just past my pillow on the end table sat the mummy box, as if it had been placed precisely where I couldn’t miss it even in the dimmest light. There it was. But how???? At that moment a switch flipped in my brain, like a circuit breaker snapping. It was just too much. “Forget it,” I muttered and fell fast asleep right next to it, never to be bothered by it again.

Whenever I reach the end of my rope with a phobia or a hang-up, when I am ironically and inescapably confronted by one of my worst fears (root canal, anyone?), something inside me snaps and I just accept it without any more fuss. I call that “having a mummy box moment.”