They Are Proud Of Their Ignorance

The nook beside the highway where our mismatched houses stood ended at the stairway to their house.  They invited Mom and I for some t.v. viewing and we watched most of the Roots series with them but then Mom declined any further invitations. This began a long and pathetic feud.

The woman at one end of the conflict was a single mother of three. Her oldest son was a few years my junior, his full sister was in between. A half-brother was youngest. These starkly dumb boys were my constant on again off again companions, while I lived in that spot. They enjoyed suckering me into hanging out and abusing me as the day ended. I would beat up the older boy when I could catch him and once the mother sicced an adult boyfriend on me for slapping his face til his mouth bled. The boyfriend relented when I told him I would cry juvinile.

Once, on a day when her children and I were friends, the mother walked into a room where I had been conversing with them through a window. She used this event to launch a rumor that I was peeping on her. She mispronounced the act as "window peeking." I made a cartoon after another neighbor, my English teacher, repeated the charge before the entire class. He then went on to suggest that he did not believe my denial which sucked. So in protest I drew my cartoon of an ugly face with its' nose squashed up with bulging google-eyes and wrote "Window Peeker" under it. They were printed in bulk, and I taped them to the glass on her front door. I bought my own pornography when I was 15 and thought she was homely. I never saw her naked except in her front yard when she'd lean forward in a tank-top. After I lost weight I went back to the neighborhood and she tried to hit on me. When I just smiled and excused myself she said I was "still an asshole."

I had some legal trouble in that town after I made the mistake of telling her brats of a time when I was an outlaw in California and they hatched a scheme to have me busted. It took compromising themselves but they didn't care. They gave me a probation officer for the only time in my life for contributing to their pointless crime.

There was a grade school that served the locals up through the 3rd or 4th grade located just beside our residences. It was our play area, with a baseball diamond, a football field, and a basketball court. The day after I entertained them, and that other grubby little guy with those stories from my past, I found them fiddling around with the back door of the school.

At first they acted like they wanted me to leave but they quickly allowed me into their secret. There was a loose panel and they could open the door.

I was thinking I did not like this setup, since I had no interest in stealing at that time, but became lured by the information that inside was a scholastic book club display to be plucked. They assured me it was not all baby books.

We entered the building and my three accomplices began scooping cookies from trays that were laid out for an official function to come later that night. I warned against leaving traces and they ignored me. We took a significant number of books from the display and afterwards they assaulted the school a second time and tore the place up and began running around outside throwing the platters that the cookies had been on and loudly blowing a teacher's whistle.

When the police investigated they pointed the collective finger at me. They said, I made them do it, and because of the age difference they were believed. When the portable classrooms were attacked my probation officer wanted me to confess for shitting on a desk and smearing the walls with feces. I said "I did not defecate in that classroom" and she eventually gave up.

There was another thing. Someone called the Ogle County Sheriff's department, posed as my mother, and said "I do not give a damn about any of your bullshit and you aren't going to do anything to my son!!" The probation officer came again for that. Mom remained frightened through all of this and cried whenever the probation officer came.