Chapter 5: Planning For The Future

Taking control of my life meant that I was going to be in charge of the timetable, and this was a major step along the way. Mrs. Bakkley told me to go home, and she would make some arrangements. I would need to discuss this with my parents and meet with her and the administration for permission. She was also going to speak to one of the math teachers over at Towson High. She would tell me when the meeting was.

On Thursday she told me everything was all set, and that she had made an appointment with Mr. Butterfield for after school on Monday. I would need to get at least one of my parents there at four.

At dinner that night I asked them if either of them could come. The results were predictable. Dad wanted to know what I had done now, and Mom wanted to know if I was being punished or given detention. “Your faith in me is overwhelming!” I responded, which brought outraged cries about ‘lip’ and ‘backtalk’ but no hitting. Suzie just stared, not understanding. She liked school and didn’t understand why staying after was bad. Hamilton was much more of the opinion that I was being punished for something, a feeling for which he had an inordinate amount of glee. It was bad enough that I had to mention to Dad that Ham was really starting to get on my nerves, and I was starting to work up the energy to give him a good thumping. This got Dad to give me a stern warning to leave my little brother alone, but it also got him to chew Ham’s ass ragged. He left me alone after that.

Mom pushed for an explanation of the meeting, and I simply told her, truthfully, that it involved getting permission to take an advanced class. I left it at that, and when they pushed, I simply stated that it would make more sense on Monday. Mom would ask Mrs. Bonner across the street to keep an eye on Suzie and Hamilton after school.

Larry and Lenore Bonner were our parents’ best friends. He was an executive at Black & Decker, and she worked part-time at the County offices in Towson. They were older than my folks, and their children were several years older than us. Their youngest daughter Shelley, a senior over at Towson High, was a frequent babysitter, but Mrs. Bonner often sat for us.

I continued running every morning, always taking Daisy for a quick run first, and was now doing three laps around the neighborhood. One day I had Dad drive the route with me and we used his odometer to check the distance. Our best guess was that two laps, one small with Daisy, and then one large by myself, worked out to about a mile and a half. By now the cramp in my side was history, and I was able to speed up enough to add in another small lap. Dad noticed this, and he also noticed me lifting the bricks down in the garage and asked if I wanted a set of real weights for Christmas. I decided barbells would be a better choice and told him so. He just nodded and said he would think about it.

Hamilton was getting to be quite annoying. He was bitching constantly about everything I did. When I got up early to run, he would complain I was waking him up. I started taking my clothes to the bathroom to dress and he complained about my opening the drawers. I started laying out my clothes at night before I went to bed, and he complained about where I left them. He started turning off my alarm clock, so I had to double check it each night, and placed it on the far side of the bed where he couldn’t get at it without going over me. He had a major case of schadenfreude going on; it wasn’t enough to feel good, others had to feel bad.

It really came to a head at dinner on the Saturday night before our meeting with Mrs. Bakkley. Right there at the dinner table, he decided to tattle on me, that I wasn’t sleeping in my pajamas, but in my underwear.

In my humble opinion, pajamas are one of the stupidest things ever invented. Really, clothing to sleep in? Mind you, I certainly don’t mind the look when a woman is wearing a pajama top and nothing else, but on guys it just looks dumb. My mother, however, insisted on them. The day I went off to college I started sleeping in my briefs and an undershirt, like normal men do. I’ve never worn pajamas since then and had no intention of restarting now.

He sat there looking smugly at me as Mom stared at me, horrified. I just looked at him and disgustedly asked, “Why in the world could you possibly care what I sleep in?”

He smugly replied, “It’s the rules! I bet you get punished now!”

“Christ on a crutch!” I muttered under my breath.

“Carling!” protested Mom. “I heard that.”

“Sorry.”

Hamilton started to laugh, saying I had been cussing but I think Dad had enough out of him. He was told to shut up, or else. Ham looked daggers at me, which I just ignored.

Mom, however, was all worked up about my improper sleeping attire. “Carling, why aren’t you wearing your pajamas to bed at nights?” she demanded.

“Because I don’t want to wear them.” Simple answer.

“But you are supposed to sleep in pajamas.”

I smiled at that, blandly. “Oh? Do you wear pajamas?” I asked. I already knew the answer to that was a resounding NO! Mom preferred to wear very small and skimpy sleepshirts, although I also suspected Dad preferred her to wear them as well. At 5’10” tall, Mom was slim and very leggy, and a real looker. She was slender, an A cup, but was within five pounds of the day she had married, and that after three children. She was an elegant and good-looking woman, and she was very fortunate that my father was 6’1” tall, so she could wear high heels and not be taller than him. In the future she would be considered a MILF or a cougar, but back then she was just a hot mom.

Mom had the decency to blush as she stumbled out, “Uhhhh...”

“Really? I think I know what that means.” I hooked my thumb over at Dad, who was now grinning. “How about Dad? Does he wear pajamas?” I knew the answer to that as well. He wore briefs and an undershirt, too, or at least until Mom got into bed with him. For all her coldness with Hamilton and me, Mom was decidedly not cold with Dad. The romance was alive and well across the hall.

Mom blushed again.

I looked over at Suzie and grinned. “I hope the pajama police don’t find me! You want some extra pajamas?” They’d look like they were made by Omar the Tentmaker on her.

“Yuck! You’ve worn them!”

“Yeah, they probably have my cooties,” I said, which got a laugh from Dad.

She stuck her tongue out at me, which I returned, and Mom began protesting that as well. It was a lost cause for her. Hamilton tried to protest but Dad shut him down again. I really began to wonder about him. He had some mental health issues on our first go-around; this time looked to be the same, and I wasn’t sure how much I was going to tolerate this time.

That Monday I hung around the library after school until my parents were to show up. It was always open late for students who needed to do homework. At four I met them in the lobby, and we went into the office. Mrs. Bakkley was waiting there with Mr. Butterfield, and another woman I wasn’t sure I knew.

Butterfield pointed at me and asked Mrs. Bakkley, “This is the student you are talking about? Him?” I definitely got a warm and fuzzy feeling.

“Why don’t we all sit down,” she replied. She led the way into a teacher’s conference room. We all took seats around the table.

“This is your meeting,” he replied. “I think it’s a mistake, myself,” he added nastily.

My parents were thoroughly confused now but getting angry. Mrs. Bakkley took on the lead role. Turning to me, she asked, “Did you explain your plan to your parents?”

“No, I just said the meeting was about taking some advanced classes. Nothing else.”

She nodded and turned to my folks. “Let me start off with an explanation. Last week Carl came to me with the suggestion that he take both Algebra 1 and 2 this year, to, in effect, squeeze two years of math in. When I asked why, his response was that it would allow him to take Geometry next year, which is normally a high school course. That’s why I brought Mrs. Rogers over from Towson High. She is a math teacher there.” Mrs. Rogers said hello.

Chapter 6 »