Never the Same

A story of a troubled boy who grows up to be a struggling adult. It's about the many influences a person encounter as they go through life.

Never the Same    

 

Each and every occurrence we endure or savor alters us in incremental cumulative respects. Those little, and large, experiences influences us in untold ways. By the people we meet, the places we go, and the situations we’re thrust into make us who we intrinsically become. In essence, with every experience, we are never the same.   

 

Influence Cluster One:  The Child

 Cue: “Destination Unknown” https://youtu.be/oTmlpbrxyTI

 

Before his unassuming beginning, he was null and void, literally nonexistent. Where would this unborn child end up?  Who is to say where any baby will end up as they grow?  What influences will alter the child and how? So, in a northern town on a cool, dark and pleasant night, typical of mid-March in a mid-latitude clime, his corporal being sprang into existence. At parturition, a special word or locution�"an actionable or, if you may, a trigger word was spoken imprinted upon the susceptible, impressionable cerebral cortex. He acted on that special word on a regular basis throughout his lifetime.  

The neonatal baby didn’t know his future, didn’t have a clue about anything as do most newborn babies, his life’s destination totally undetermined, though his unassuming situation didn’t present much promise or any grand prospect lying before his kicking tiny pink feet.  Born into an ordinary family in ordinary surroundings, his father subsisted as a dairy farmer working his parent’s farm, and his mother remained a humble housewife who would never drive a car. So, as an offspring borne of average parents without noteworthy renown and born as a trifling middle child besides, his birth went utterly un-celebrated. He was wholly changed at birth�"never to be the same.  

Kirk was a discarded second choice for a name like the star ship captain of renown and that’s what we’ll call him here. A lone entity, baby Kirk felt all alone right from the beginning.  After a day or so, the newborn human larva was transported to the family home situated along the road located equally between his two grandparents’ homes. Not much attention was paid him, uninteresting in his newborn maleness. His two sisters who had preceded him showed little interest in the squalling infant. As his adult memory re-envisions, baby Kirk spent most of his time locked up in infant penal confinement. With fine strawberry blonde hair and big ice-blue eyes the infant grew. 

Kirk recalls a few faint flickers of life as an infant.  One memory is of the late afternoon sunlight streaming through a west-facing window that lit the room to warm his little body. This remains a good memory that lingers from his limited sunny infantile memory. He recalls another not so sunny memory flicker of an ancient behemoth refrigerator that resided in the cold back room. The large noisy hulking cube-like refrigerator had a large scary finned head, but he learned early on it held yummy food items. Funny that he doesn’t recall warm caring faces peering down at him as he lay there staring at the ceiling from a crib. Kirk would be absolutely changed by the experience as a lonely baby and would never be the same thereby shaping the personality that was yet to develop.

When Kirk was four years old, the family moved into a big classic farmhouse alongside a huge red barn and tall white grain silo. This would be the family farm where he eventually grew to adulthood. Many of his childhood memories abound from there. The family moved right into the house despite learning it came with a bit of baggage. They were told that a young boy was killed right there in the farmhouse’s driveway. This disturbing knowledge lingered in Kirk’s budding subconscious.

And it lingered. Did he see something move over there? Did he hear unexplained noises? Or react to a shocking shadowy movement during the night? What’s that little unexplained chill in the air that caused him to look over his shoulder? These strange reactions sprang up occasionally in the young, impressionable, troubled Kirk. Kirk’s mother apparently sensed more than she let on. If a door unexpectedly opened on its own or some other unexplained manifestation occurred like a piece of dinnerware or utensil falling, she attributed it to the “Ghost George.”  Despite the blood curdling events, life went on just the same for the family.

His father continued to milk cows for his grandparents commuting several miles twice a day.  So, because of that Kirk’s family never had a herd of cows at their farm, but with plenty of land for crops that sort of crop farming progressed. Part of working the land and planting crops at that time came from the switchover from horse power to tractor power; however, Kirk recalls being very young riding on a hay wagon pulled by big horses on his grandparent’s farm.  After the tractors came, those big beautiful working horses probably made a lot of dog food.

Bullshoot

One significant event happened to Kirk at his grandparents’ farm.  As a small tot, he wandered unaware and unafraid, and somehow never known into the box stall where the mean and nasty bull lived.  As the story goes, they spotted little Kirk with the bull staring him down in the classic preparatory pose to charge and certainly intending bodily harm to this intruder in his ultimate domain. A sister shouted and Kirk’s father ran up, reached over the wall, grabbed Kirk by the scruff of the neck and yanked him out of that pen just as that old mean bull rammed the wall where Kirk had stood unsuspecting just a second prior. So Kirk lived on to tell the tale…

Kirk’s young childhood was populated with his two favorite pastimes, Popeye cartoons and The Three Stooges on TV, and scooting about on hands and knees on the cold linoleum floors. Early when Kirk was a toddler, his father had bought a line of John Deere equipment for the purpose of ‘farming the farm.’ As a child, the mechanics and noise of the old John Deere fascinated Kirk so much that he imitated the “pum, pum, pum” exhaust sound of those old tractors.

 Small child-sized tractors and equipment soon became his usual past time on the floor and annual wish to Santa. With his little hand-powered tractors he’d plow or bale hay on the striped linoleum flooring. There is always something to do on a farm you know, and Kirk pushed that little tractor literally miles on the floor following those imaginary crop rows around and around.  With the many hours of pushing said tractor meant he had some real wear on it while maneuvering the little John Deere with the little operational steering wheel.

Surgery

One day, the steering broke on his cherished little green and yellow John Deere.  As Kirk pushed, the tractor would go whichever direction it wanted. He was heartbroken. This was no way to farm the linoleum�"was there a new tractor on the list for Christmas? He couldn’t wait that long.  His mother knew the importance of a correctly operating tractor and arranged to have Kirk’s Grandpa T take a look at it.  Considered by the family to be a retired handyman type genius and casual all-round artist and crafter, Grandpa T would know what to do Kirk was assured.

Right off the grandparents’ kitchen and a few steps down into Grandpa T’s handyman dungeon, Kirk admired all the nuts and bolts, bits and pieces, and tools and gizmos that wowed his little heart. Soon after presenting the inoperable tractor steering, Kirk held his breath as Grandpa T began drilling out the rivets that held the halves of his little metal tractor together.  Kirk didn’t like seeing his tractor in such a disheartening dissembled state.  A tear or two maybe formed in those big blue eyes. He couldn’t imagine a good outcome from there, but he and his John Deere were committed so he put his trust in Grandpa T.

Grandpa soon identified and showed Kirk that a little metal link inside the tractor had broken.  With another bit of metal rod, he bent and drilled and filed on it until he could try it in one half of the tractor. With a little more work, he was soon satisfied with his work and showed Kirk that the steering now worked in one half. But Kirk couldn’t see how that was a good situation. How could the halves be stuck back together like before? Grandpa dumped out a couple cans of parts and rummaged through the bits and pieces until he found three rivets of the correct length.  He told Kirk that you always find what you’re looking for in the last place you look. The underlying logic in the statement was lost to little Kirk at the time only to resurface years later.

Anyway, utilizing two hammers, Grandpa carefully riveted Kirk’s little tractor back together�"good as new! Indeed, Grandpa T attained genius status in this little boy’s eyes. This wasn’t the last time Grandpa T impressed Kirk.

Greedy

Cue: “You never get what you want.” https://youtu.be/krxU5Y9lCS8

 

Every year, Grandma and Grandpa T provided the quintessential Christmas wonderland. Their Christmas tree was always full, tall, and trimmed to a T, pardon the pun. Covered in loads of multicolored lights, the tree included those old time bubbler and spinning fan types of sparkly ornaments, silvery garlands, and at least a million strands of real shiny tinsel. The tree made all the kid cousins stare wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked in Christmas ecstasy notwithstanding the mountains of gaily-wrapped presents.

After much impatient waiting by the cousin kids, everyone gathered in Christmas Land for the grand event. The excitement was palpable. Grandpa T would assume Santa duties by passing one of those perfectly wrapped present to each kid at a time to make sure no one was left out or received a present out of order. The numbers and dollar amount spent on each child had been carefully calculated to make sure all remained fair at Christmas Land.

In anticipation of a surely bountiful Christmas, Kirk came out his shy introverted shell to become a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed excited Kirk who expected the usual haul of presents though that year he had a toy baler at the top of his Christmas list. He could smell that green and yellow baler somewhere deep in that huge, delectable, and tempting present pile. He eagerly wanted to dive right in there and separate all of his presents from the rest that were surely undesirable stuff for the riff-raff cousins.

 Over the next couple hours, the pile dwindled, slowly, so excruciatingly slow until the pile of presents was completely depleted. Kirk peeked around and under the tree because he was so sure Grandpa had forgotten something, that baler, for him. Maybe it would be the grand finale of gift presentation just for him. He imagined everyone would sit engrossed and watch him open the very special gift and cheer when the baler was finally revealed. Kirk smiled with the grand vision. He was beside himself in total disbelief when the exhilaration of gift doling died down and nothing else happened. Sitting with his sizable pile of gifts, Kirk looked around in confusion and dismay. He knew something was amiss.

Kirk went directly to Santa, Grandpa T himself, to straighten this terrible oversight out right then and there. He insisted that there had to been a mistake and that there had to be one more present for him. There had to be just one more present, he asserted. Kirk’s mother went pale, grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him around, and wheeled him out of Christmas Land like a jet-propelled shopping cart.

 In the other vacant room, Kirk’s mother gave him a dressing down that he’d never forget. She told him that he was a selfish little boy and that he should be more than satisfied with everything he got and what he had gotten was a lot of very nice presents. His mother had never scolded him like that before nor would ever again. With that serious talking to, Kirk learned a hard lesson of humility that deeply affected him forever, never to be the same about Christmas and being happy with whatever he might receive in later similar situations.

Ein Doktor

Undoubtedly, Kirk lived an unhappy childhood. Because of a few medical problems in his life, Kirk assumed his sisters sought anywhere else to be other than around him. The earliest medical problem he encountered was that he had several large ugly moles he wore on his face and neck. He already had become quite upset in going to the doctor and having the moles burned off didn’t sound like much fun at all. In a doctor’s dark backroom examination room, Kirk, in shuddering trepidation, watched as the doctor approach him with a strange-looking device. Looking away in fear, he felt a localized extreme coldness and heard some serious sizzling during the procedure.

At other visits to the doctor, there were numerous injections of who knows what, blood draws that would satiate vampires and probes into various improper bodily orifices. Kirk’s fear of doctors and their suspicious evil medical procedures grew.  After all that skin freezing with what he assumed was liquid nitrogen and the many other doctor visits, Kirk was never the same.

Floodwaters

One other more personal, yet larger problem whether it was physical or mental, Kirk was one of the greatest scourges on earth for Kirk was a chronic bed wetter. There were wet, smelly sheets and clothes all the time. Crackly, uncomfortable plastic bed protectors were the order of the day, actually every night. To beat him out of his terrible malady there were talkings to. Yelling. Scolding. Embarrassments, layered on top of humiliating accidents that resulted in soiled bedclothes, furniture and floors. It wasn’t a good time for an already unhappy boy or maybe his problems caused him to be unhappy who is to say?  Bedtime turned into dreaded nighttime events and visits to dreaded doctors didn’t seem to help his malady one little bit. Nothing helped until finally, after months of lying on a metallic liquid sensor sheet hooked to a battery-powered alarm, Kirk gradually worked out of his problem though he would never be the same. Being urine retentive didn’t seem to make him much happier for he had yet more disturbing nighttime problems. Undoubtedly, he was all alone in his life.

Psychedelic nights

Cue: “Paranorimia” https://youtu.be/6epzmRZk6UU

 

Dreadfully frightened of the dark and coupled with the previous grievous personal problem, Kirk pleaded for a nightlight to be on at all times. He had no bedside table, so he rigged a long cord over his bed that he could reach, pull, and switch the light on from bed. No need to venture out of his warm bed to check out those eerie moving shadows that seem to lurk in the dim light of the nightlight. So, because of his ever-searching, darting eyes, Kirk spent a lot of the time awake in bed.  Watching his surroundings closely, he’d spy for the movements that would occur often enough and pull the bed covers up tighter to his nose and shiver. He would stare into the grainy night to watch for those moving smudges of illumination floating past his open doorway or see the same preternatural illumination next to or over his bed if he awoke from a deep sleep.  In those instances where he couldn’t bear it any longer, Kirk would reach up, grab the cord, and snap the light on.

Even with the light on, shadows cast from toys or books from the weak night light would strangely bend, grow, shrink, and shift in mysterious unnatural ways. Not only that, the childish wallpaper in his room imprinted with toys, elephants, and people would come alive in the night to slowly creep about in the dark. Kirk became so terrified that he had his mother paint over the disturbing wallpaper. With the bare walls, they hung pictures of happy scenes but after dark these pictures would become menacing and bulge, twist, and stretch out of shape. So, they were all taken down as well.

Kirk later wondered if he had been drugged with hallucinogenics on those deeply disturbing childhood nights. He will never know, but still ponders those bewilderments. He wonders if his favorite doctors prescribed something mind bending to combat Kirk’s many problems. For all those bewildering reasons, Kirk felt very alone and would never be the same.

Squirm

One other nighttime terror occurred after Kirk’s eighth birthday. As a wonderfully thoughtful birthday present from his aunt, at least wonderful according to Kirk’s father, was a pillow stuffed with her homegrown goose down. Undoubtedly, the pillow proved very soft�"at first. After a few days, it seemed the pillow grew more dense and moist. After that, to add to his other night terrors, he thought he could hear something inside it with an unnerving squirmy movement. He took the pillow to his mother who scoffed at his concerns at first, but opened the liner anyway to look inside.

She groaned a little and with a nonverbal remark directly took the pillow out to the burning barrel with little Kirk in tow. Before tossing the pillow in the barrel, for some reason, she showed him the inside of the pillow. There, a sight that’ll haunt Kirk forever, the goose down teamed with a multitude of squirmy worms. A little sick to his stomach, he watched his mother go get the trash from the house and started the whole mess on fire.  Regarding pillows or that “special” aunt, Kirk would never be the same.

To Be Continued:

 Never the Same Influence Cluster Two: “The Kid”