15 Years Later

Mike and I have mentioned the list of stories I tell in class.  Affectionately referred to as “The Larsen Stories.”  While we’re just sitting here bullshitting, I thought I’d share another one of these old yarns the way I’ve done them in the classroom for years.

But before we get into that, a quick word about my mother.  What a saint.  We didn’t really have diagnoses like ADHD back in the 1970’s, but if we did, her life would have made a lot more sense. 

The H in ADHD would have described just why I was so active all of the time.  I was a constant, frenzied ball of energy.  And my mother’s main job as a parent was likely just tolerating the many behaviors that stemmed from that energy. 

I mean, we’ve well established the notion that I have always been an attention-needy brat.  But add the word “hyper” anywhere in the equation and let’s just call it a miracle that my mother has any sanity left.

But she didn’t just tolerate.  She encouraged.  She laughed.  She listened.  She hugged, defended, guided and quite often…redirected.  All from the love of being a mother.  As I’ve gotten older and reflected on these things, I realize that she had some examples to draw upon. 

My great-grandmother used to love baby-sitting.  She walked me to preschool every afternoon.  This would be after playing along willingly and patiently with the rules of whatever game I made up that morning.  She laughed the whole time.

My grandmother (her daughter) showed the same interest and patience.  One of her favorite things was watching us open presents when we would get together for Christmas dinner.  But I also remember calling Christmas morning to tell her every detail of every present that Santa had left for me under the tree.  She listened to all of it and you could hear her smile through the phone.

Throw an Aunt Kitty in the mix and you realize that there was an entire all-star team of women involved in helping me to understand the world around me and to grow up in it and around it.  But just as every all-star team has a superstar player, my team was led by a saint.  Saint Motherly Mom of Detroit.

So for our first beer together today, let’s clink glass and have a quick cheers to my mother.  Thanks, Mom.  For all of it.

Having said that, let’s enjoy a good laugh.  Here’s the story of how I accidentally tripped that saint of a mother down a flight of stairs.  Turn down the lights…cue the storyteller…and here we go:

One day, I was playing on the stairs. 

I don’t remember how old I was, but I can tell you that I was young enough to be able to lay across a stair.  I mean, I was short anyway when I was a little fella, but that’s a good indication of how young I was. 

For me, the stairs were a very cool place to play.  I had G.I. Joe guys that I would have at the bottom of the stairs and Star Wars guys at the top.  We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, so we couldn’t afford a lot of the big spaceships like some other kids had.  I only had a couple.  So I made up some of my own. 

A gallon of milk used to come in a big cardboard container like the little milks in the school cafeteria.  So when we finished a gallon of milk, Mom would rinse it out, lay it down on it’s side as if you were pouring, and cut holes in the top so Star Wars guys could sit in it.  Then she’d staple or glue some cardboard on the sides for wings.  This made for some fantastic spaceships. 

Then I had balled up pairs of socks for tanks.  Matchbox cars also played various roles in this game.  Some could fly, whereas others could not.  I tied shoestrings to the handrails and had G.I. Joe guys using them to swing up the stairs to get at the Star Wars guys.  I used crumpled-up welcome mats as mountains or home base-type camps at the bottom of the stairs as well. 

So, I’m playing on the stairs. 

I’m half-way up the stairs and the G.I. Joe guys are making their way up like it’s a giant mountain.  The Star Wars guys are all off to the side hiding against the wall waiting to ambush the G.I. Joe guys when they get there.  It’s gonna be a major battle. 

All of a sudden, I see that my mother is starting to walk down the stairs with a giant armload of laundry.  But she hasn’t noticed that I’m on the stairs and she can’t see me in front of her because the laundry is blocking her view. 

I’ve said before that little kids love two kinds of games.  One is any kind of game that involves running.  Running had a lot to do with how I got run over by that chicken truck.  The other kind of game that kids love is anything similar to hide-and-seek.  Early on, when kids are really young, it’s a peek-a-boo thing.

Well, with my mother walking down the stairs and not knowing that I’m there, it is the perfect set up for a hide-and-seek/peek-a-boo moment.  She’s going to walk right by me, not know that I was here, and then I get to stand up and say, “Hi Mom!  I was here the whole time!” 

This is going to be the best peek-a-boo thing ever.  I lay across the stair really quickly and quietly so she can’t see me and I’m waiting for her to go by.  This is going to be awesome.  I just start smiling and have a hard time not laughing or saying something out loud because it’s going to be so awesome. 

It isn’t until it’s way too late that I realize that as my mother is walking down, she’s stepping on every stair.  Kids just don’t think of these things.  When she’s about to step where I’m lying, it occurs to me at the very last second that she’s about to squash me.  I could die. 

There’s no time to react.  Even saying something out loud wouldn’t save me.  So when she’s about to make the step, I do the only thing I can do to save my life…and you would have done the same thing…I grab her foot.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been walking down the stairs, thinking no one else is around, and had someone grab your foot.  It’s never happened to me.  But I imagine that it’s pretty unnerving.

Anyway, since she was so startled, she tried to pull her foot back up, but it was too late.  She had already committed to the step.  She fell forward, landed face-first on the laundry, and then tumbled the rest of the way down the stairs. 

Now, I have to say, while my initial idea wasn’t a very good one at all, the defense mechanism of grabbing her foot worked beautifully.  As she fell, she went right over the top of where I was laying and didn’t even touch me.  I was safe and sound…for approximately three seconds.

Have you ever seen your mom really mad?  I mean, really, really, scared kind-of mad?  I’ve seen it a few times in my day.  If you haven’t, believe me…you’re better off.  And you don’t want to see it in the future.

All of her hair immediately became messed up and sprouted in every direction.  Her whole face turned red.  Her glasses had been flung across the floor and laundry had been thrown everywhere.  And then there was the moment where she put it all together.  She saw me on the stairs and scared-mad turned instantly into just plain mad-mad.

I finished my original plan by waving and saying, “Hi Mom!” but it was a pathetic wave and I didn’t say it with the fun enthusiasm I had planned.  It did not have the effect I was hoping for.

I don’t remember much after that.  It’s probably best that way.  I know she used all three of my names when she started yelling at me and ended up using THE paddle from THE drawer in the kitchen, but the rest is all lost in a fog. 

I’ll tell you this, though, I still played on those stairs many times after that.  The incident didn’t wreck my favorite place to play.  You can’t blame the stairs.  But I was done with peek-a-boo that day.  Haven’t played since.  Still too new.

Now, if you’re judging me for having tripped my mother down the stairs…if you’re thinking, “What a terrible kid…”  I’d like to follow up with a long-story-short.

People sometimes ask, “What’s your earliest memory?”  Mine is really early.  I think I was less than a year old.  For someone to have that early of a memory, it’s usually a traumatic event. 

Well, I was using a walker as a young toddler to make my way around the kitchen.  You know, where you’re sitting in a sling and your legs dangle beneath.  Well, someone forgot to close the half-door to the basement and I tumbled down the entire basement stairway in my walker.  I ended up screaming on the cement floor at the bottom.  I’ll bet my face was red and my hair was messed up…

Anyway, the memory I have is my mother picking me up and sitting me on the portable dishwasher in the kitchen and using a washcloth to wipe off some blood from a couple of cuts.  I was still crying, but happy that she was there.  I ended up being fine, but it was a traumatic enough episode for me to remember it to this day.

Now if you think about it, regardless who left that door open, I did fall down the steps on my mother’s watch.  So I say Mom and I are Even-Steven on the stairway incidents.  How about you?