While it wasn’t quite illegal to eat in our childhood home, the restrictions were extreme. Two Oreo cookies after dinner, an apple in the afternoon, and that was it in terms of sweets.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Everything else in our house was meat and potatoes, and mostly potatoes.
And pasta. A lot of pasta.
There was never a lot of money in my childhood home, so food was often bland in color and miniscule in portion size.
Nevertheless, the rules in terms of eating were insane. I went through my entire childhood never tasting a single sweet that we saw on television.
No Flaky Puffs. No Ring Dings. No Twinkies. No fruit roll-ups. No Pop Tarts. No Rice Krispies Treats.
My parents had plenty of snack food set aside for them and lots of soda, but the kids at Almac’s brand Oreo cookies and drank milk and Kool-Aid.
So I’m not surprised that Kelli was grounded for a food-related issue.
I remember the 1987 New Year’s Eve party, but I don’t remember being nearly as cool as Kelli describes me. In my junior year of high school, my friend, Danny, and I were hired at the McDonald’s in Milford, MA, about 30 minutes from our hometown. The Milford McDonald’s was paying slightly more than minimum wage at the time ($4.85), so we felt this was worth the 30 minute commute. Though Danny didn’t last long at McDonald’s (he eventually became a dishwasher at a restaurant across the street), I quickly gained a core of Milford friends and began spending the majority of my time with them.
It made sense that many of my friends eventually came from Milford. I was spending almost all my time there. Halfway through my junior year of high school, I became a manager at McDonald’s and was working 40 hours a week or more most of the time.
Kelli wasn’t kidding when she said that I didn’t see my little sister much. I had a 30 minute commute to a fulltime job after school and track practice.
I was never home.
I’ve been trying to mentally reassemble the guest list for that New Year’s Eve party. I’m sure that my high school girlfriend, Laura, was there, and I am also certain that BJ Luciani was there because his Corvette broke down on the way to my house, requiring us to push it the last mile to my driveway.
Kelli has confirmed that my best friend of 25 years and DJ partner, Bengi, was there as well. It was around this time that we met one another, and though his memory is usually superior, he couldn’t quite remember if he was there.
My sister had a crush on him at the time, so she is certain of his attendance.
There were others at the party as well. Stephanie Fahey, Deb Davis, Danny Pollock, Whips & Chains, the Tanners and perhaps some Blackstone people are possibilities, but I cannot remember. There were probably about a dozen people in all, and if I recall, my parents were out all night, allowing my party to stretch out into the wee hours of the morning.
Also notable about this party was the lack of alcohol. I did not drink until well after high school, nor did most of my friends. We had a great time, but we did it sober.
I remember the party mostly because it was my first party that included girls. Prior to this New Year’s Eve party, my last party was probably my tenth birthday party, a stellar affair in which I was allowed to invite three other people. I invited Jimbo Powers, Peter Archambault and John Fox.
My parents gave me a desk and a globe that day, just two in a long line of bizarre, inexplicable gifts. In later years, I would receive more furniture, a microwave oven, flatware, a set of dishes and bowls, hand towels and bed linens.
They were preparing to kick me out at an early age.
Seriously.
Kelli sounds surprised in her post that I was allowed to have a party, but unlike her, I had been given almost unlimited freedom at an exceptionally early age.
When I was ten, I began babysitting for my brothers and sisters, sending them to bed at 9:00 PM and staying up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when my parents would finally arrive home after a night of carousing. I became a connoisseur of late night horror movies, MASH reruns and The Twilight Zone during those days, and even today, I can’t believe that my parents would leave a ten year old kid in charge of four other kids, ages six to ten, for hours at a time.
I was also sleeping in an unheated basement bedroom by then and had the freedom to leave at any time via the bulkhead (hatchway for those of you who did not grow up in Massachusetts) and utilized this freedom often. I would leave the house at 11:00 PM every Saturday night and walk two miles to the local middle school for midnight hoops without my parents ever even knowing I was gone.
A New Year’s Eve party, even with girls, did not seem like anything special.
In fact, I routinely had girls in my bedroom for hours without my parents disturbing us once. My evil step-father’s entire explanation of the birds and the bees amounted to this:
“I don’t care what you do with them down here. Just don’t get them pregnant.”
Sage advice from the worst man I have ever met.
But I’ll save that for a future post.
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