Draft of Chapter 5: A Banana Slug in a Redwood Forest

The journey of writing narrative memoir is exhilarating, frustrating, and eats up your self-confidence at times.

The journey of writing narrative memoir is exhilarating, frustrating, and eats up your self-confidence at times.

This is a draft of Chapter 5. This was a hard chapter to write. Another aspect of narrative memoir is that you have to go back and unbury painful memories and loss. You also get to revisit times when you felt you belonged.

Aspects of this chapter that I like are the stories and the emotion. As I wrote it, I realized that I grew up in a place that is an autistic kid’s dream- the environment adapted to me- the only time it did so. There is a a huge change from beginning to end in this chapter.

Although I think the stories and emotion are strong, the structure isn’t there yet. This chapter needs work on pacing and flow.

I have momentum in writing so I am moving on to Chapter 6. Once I finish a draft of Chapter 6 (where the banana slug get transported to the desert), I am going to dive into editing. That may lead to a lot of reshaping of how I decide to tell the story.

Thank goodness I have a great book coach and people supporting my work and find my voice distinctive. This is nothing like academic writing or essay writing. It is way more fun and way more challenging.

I did something for me that was fun in this chapter- think about my early life as a biome, habitat and community letting me be an ecologist for a minute.

I don’t want a lot of comments now on individual chapters since there is actually a spine developing through the first six chapters. So, reading one chapter is hard since it connects with previous ones. You can get a sense of what I am trying to accomplish at https://www.jim-coleman-phd.com/pathologically-genuine-book-project.html

But, if you see potential, keep spurring me on.

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In the beginning I belonged just like a banana slug belongs in a redwood forest.

My behaviors and coping mechanisms were quite different from my peers. But back then those differences did not make me an outlier or outcast. The environment fit me.

In fact, my social environment was so good as a young kid that there were times it became overwhelming and I would just kick other kids out of the house so I could play by myself.

This horrified my father. Apparently, kicking people out of the house so you could be alone was a terrible social faux pas that I never understood.

My biome was the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. There were definitely squirrels and a lot of hills, but the dominant organisms in this biome were young, middle-aged, and older Jewish people of varying financial means, varying religious observances, and similar joy of great bagels, lox, corned beef, hoagies, and delicacies from other ethnic groups such as outstanding pizza, pierogis, and kielbasa. We also learned to love Chinese food, since Chinese restaurants were the only restaurants open on Christmas.

The biome also was dominated by a love for Pittsburgh sports teams.

I was born in 1960; the year Bill Mazeroski hit a walk-off home run to defeat the New York Yankees in game seven of the world series making him the most revered human in Pittsburgh for the remainder of his career which lasted into the 1970s. He was my hero, too.

So, I fit right in.

My habitat and home was on Pocusset street and its surroundings that included one of Pittsburgh’s largest parks, Schenley Park.

I moved to Pocusset Street when I was two years old. I don’t remember my first house.

The Pocusset street house was a brick two story house, with four bedrooms, all upstairs. On the main floor was our living room, which was basically off limits for daily use, but at least did not have plastic covered sofas and chairs like my father’s mother did.

The most important space was a common space surrounded by the four bedrooms. This is where I Frisky would heal me. This also became the place where I most belonged.

The house had a large front porch that served as a game room for me and my brother on nice days, a small front yard surrounded by bushes that was a great place to play with Frisky, a detached one car garage with a roof just high enough that when I fell off, I sprained my ankle but didn’t break anything, a grassy backyard big enough for outdoor activities involving a least another dozen little kids, and a partially finished basement with a wooden bar. The bar was totally irrelevant. None of us really noticed it was there- it just got in the way. I suspect it probably felt like me in later years, just wishing it could find a place where it felt seen and valued.

The backyard was mostly a place of joy for games and adventure with my friends, even though it was the only place I ever got into a physical altercation. My brother showed me some self-defense moves one day, so I decided to try it out on my next-door friend, Kenny. He won that fight in about thirty seconds. That was the first and last physical fight I ever had.

I didn’t need to get in fights as I young kid.

Rather, all I needed was my older brother by seven years, Howard. My parents called him Howie. Everyone else in his generation called him Chooch, after a mediocre catcher playing for the Mets, named Choo-Choo Coleman.

My brother was popular, smart, and athletic. I never got beat up by other kids because they’d fear what my brother and his friends might do in retaliation.

Howard also treated me extraordinarily well. When I look back, I am amazed that my fourteen-year-old brother let me as a seven-year-old hang around with him and his friends when I wasn’t hanging out with mine.

I was proud to be his little brother. I liked it when some people called me “Little Chooch.”

My brother would not let me adopt that name.

He would say “no! You are Jimmy!.”

He said that not because he was embarrassed, but because even as a fourteen-year-old he knew that I needed to develop my own identity.

The house also had a basement that was my entertainment center as well as being the home of all the normal fears of a little kid.

The basement had a couch we were allowed to sit on, our TV, and the finished part of the basement had ugly yellow and brown linoleum tiles and was long enough to play outdoor games, like floor hockey with one other person. This is where I spent Saturday mornings falling in love with Bugs Bunny, the Tasmanian Devil, Bullwinkle, Boris, Natasha, Dudley Do-Right, Wile E. Coyote, Underdog, and George of the Jungle. I also received a lot of education about the world. Walter Cronkite seemed like a trusted family member. It was also in that basement that I learned of events that I will never forget, even when I was only 7 and 8 years old, such as Martin Luther King being shot, Bobby Kennedy being shot, and Neil Armstrong taking a walk on the moon.

The unfinished parts of the basement had floors of cold concrete and bad lighting. Our washer and dryer were in one of the unfinished rooms. We had a large unfinished storage room where we stored things- the most important thing we stored there for me was pop. Other than that, I tried to stay out of the unfinished spaces because I was certain there were monsters, goblins, or large rats who dined on young children.

I remember needing to go downstairs to fetch pop with my heart pounding in fear as a navigated in and out of the dark spaces of the storage room, arriving upstairs out of breath and relived that I lived another evening.

My community was comprised of twenty or so other kids close to my age within a couple block radius. We all grew up together, so social interactions were second nature. It was never very hard to find people to play with. And, I had multiple interests. Playing sports was by far number one. But I also enjoyed chess and risk. So, I was able to take advantage of the diversity of interests of the twenty or so kids my age.

For example, there was an empty lot four doors down where we would play spontaneous games of kickball, softball, whiffle ball or pass a football. Across the street were two non-athletic friends who enjoyed playing Risk, and we went back and forth to each other’s house at will. A little further down the road there was an S curve where the street widened where street hockey games became a passion.

I formed a best-friend-forever relationship with one particular kid, Adam.

Adam was short and thin like me with straight hair cut in a bowl shape. He was also smart, athletic, socially confident and rebellious. We were both also quite creative. I always thought he was better than me at everything, but he never intentionally made me feel that way.

Adam lived in a two-bedroom apartment in an aged building just up the hill from Pocusset Street with his mom, who was a widow. My dad worked in the public sector and my mom was a teacher, so we were not rich, but I never wanted for anything. Adam’s financial scenario was more precarious. He was also the only one of the many kids I interacted with to not have a living father, which I suspect made it harder for him than I ever realized at the time

We became a part of each other’s family. Our bond was created through sports- playing sports, going to sporting events, and making up games with sports cards.

Adam and I would play baseball, softball, kickball, basketball, hockey and football together. We were extraordinary sports fans and probably could recite the starting line-ups of every professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey team.

The reason we could do that is that we were obsessed with sports cards. We were not obsessed with collecting sports card. We were obsessed with having sports cards and making up games that we could play with them. This meant that we knew every player in all four leagues.

We used our allowances or any funds we could find to go down to Eddie’s Newsstand on Murray Avenue to buy packs of cards. After a birthday, or when we had extra money, we wouldn’t buy a pack, we would buy a box. We would enthusiastically open the boxes of cards on the floor to see who we got while throwing out hundreds of pieces of bubble come that came with packs of cards. We would not throw out duplicate cards. Rather we would cross out the name of the player and put in the name of another player whose card we didn’t have.

This practice cost me a lot of money later in life. We had many valuable cards whose value we destroyed. For example, I looked through some of the cards I kept and found Lew Alcindor’s (later Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s) rookie basketball card. That card in perfect condition is worth as much as $70,000, though few cards are that perfect. My card was not in perfect condition. In fact, I had crossed out Lew Alcindor’s name and put in the name of a new player that didn’t have a card yet.

We did this because we were both skeptical of what normal people thought. We weren’t that interested in the stars, because most people cared about those cards. We liked the underdogs or players who just caught our attention. We met each card where they were and gave them equal attention. A trait I carried on for the rest of my career..

We had three stadiums. Baseball, football and basketball were played in my stadium which was the common room upstairs and my house and in Adam’s stadium which was the long living room in his apartment. For hockey, we need a smoother non-carpeted stadium so that players (their card) could hit a bingo chip that would slide across the floor. The main stadium for that activity was Adam’s kitchen floor.

Baseball involved having cards in the field. One of us would use the pitcher’s card to throw a cardboard chip to the plate and the other would swing with the card of the player who was at bat. The chip would be fielded by the cards on the field. We kept score. We kept records of each player’s success.

For basketball we would have cards of each team around their plastic cup and a players card would be used to shoot a bingo chip in the basket.

Football and hockey were similarly creative.

We designed the games so we could play with each other or by ourselves. Both of us would play a lot by ourselves. Adam kept great records. Mine weren’t as good. But we would combine the statistics from our own games and rank our players.

When I threw kids out of the house when I got overwhelmed with whatever we were doing, I would find my peace by playing one of the games upstairs in my stadium, alone.

Adam and I hung out a lot and knew every nook and cranny of our biome. We shared musical interests, movie interests, and found ways to play sports with each other and on teams. Adam also got me to break my obsession as a rule a follower. We got caught shoplifting some small items form a nickel and dime store.

Young kids were allowed to stray far by themselves in those days. Forbes Field where the Pirates played, where Bill Mazeroski’s home run was hit, and Roberto Clemente owned right field, was a mile or two walk from my house. Tickets in the bleachers were $1.00. We walked to many games. Sometimes my Uncle Morrie would give me his box seat tickets to me. They were just a few rows from the field, and I would go with Adam. We would spend most of the game harassing the third baseman of the other team.

We also played a lot of sports. We had a third-grade softball team where Adam was the star player. I was an OK player but had the role of pitcher, but I was good enough to be a cog in the wheel of what was an outstanding group of third grade athletes. Our third-grade team beat a sixth-grade team which led to awesome celebration/

Adam and I stayed connected for a few years after I moved to Connecticut. Both of our teenage years were hard. Mine were isolated and lonely.

I don’t know if Adam ever felt that way, but he got in with the crowd into pot and LSD, and not school. So, he never reached his academic potential.

We lost touch.

When I was in my thirties my mom ran into Adam’s mom on the street and got an update.

By this time, I was playing guitar a lot. I really liked Jackson Browne. Playing his songs on the guitar and singing his lyrics was one of the ways I had learned to emotionally regulate when my teenage years got so hard.

Jackson Browne wrote a beautiful song, Song for Adam. It was one I played often. The lyrics to this song became emotionally overwhelming for me when I heard the update:

When we parted, we were laughing still
As our goodbyes were said
And I never heard from him again
As each our lives we led
Except for once in someone else’s
Letter that I read
Until I heard the sudden word
That a friend of mine was dead

Earlier in the song, the lyrics are,

Now the story’s told that Adam jumped

But I’m thinking that he fell

Like Jackson Browne’s friend Adam, my friend Adam committed suicide by jumping off one of Pittsburgh’s bridges. Like the character in the song, I have to imagine that Adam fell.

We were both such happy young kids. I viewed Adam as invincible. We also were bonded by our similarities which went beyond the time we lost touch. Suicidal ideation became daily for me at times, but I had no idea that Adam shared a feeling of isolation and hopelessness, too. Would things have been better for both of us if I hadn’t moved? I wonder about that a lot.

Adam didn’t have much social anxiety. I didn’t either until about the time that boys and girls started having interest in each other.

That is where the first signs that belonging might not last forever. Despite being friendly with so many of the girls I grew up with, I didn’t know how to approach them when we reached the point where awkward dating emerged in our social world.

If we had some sort of dance, I could never muster up the courage to ask someone to dance. I felt ridiculously awkward.

Boys and Girls created lists of their most favored members of the opposite sex and would compare them with their friends. There was a girl, Jill, that I liked but I was too afraid to talk to her. I heard via the grapevine that I was third on her list. Being third made me ecstatic- at least she saw me. I never dreamed I could be number one on anybody’s list.

Although knowing that I was at least on the list of a girl I liked, these years are where I learned the feeling of rejection. I never really got actually rejected. But, because I wasn’t able to have a girl friend, I felt rejected. I also started to feel jealousy for my male friends who seemed to approach girls so easy.

Life was pretty easy when I never really worried about what other people thought of me. But, I worried about what Jill thought. And, I found that although she noticed me, I wasn’t very relevant. My self-confidence started to crater. I don’t think I ever had the courage to ask a girl for a date, at least until I was in my thirties. I never had a pre-teen girlfriend, and actually never had a girlfriend until I was twenty-seven.

I also lacked self-confidence and a competitive drive. There were only two times I remember standing out amongst the crowd.

The first was in elementary school. We had homework to write a story. I wrote a story about gumballs in a gumball machine. I was able to feel deep empathy for gumballs as their friends disappeared when someone inserted a nickel and turned the handle and expressed that well with words. Teachers told my parents that this story showed that I had great gifts as a writer.

Telling my parents I was good at something usually backfired. My father would take the feedback and greatly embellish it. My mom would get overly proud. In this instance, I reacted by not wanting to write anything, anymore.

I also apparently have a natural tennis swing, still to this day. My parents had me take tennis lessons with a pro. The pro was apparently quite amazed at my swing and told my parents that if I didn’t play golf or baseball and focused on tennis I could be a star.

Not playing baseball was a non-starter despite the pressure applied by my parents. Later I would play tennis, and it was pretty decent. But, I didn’t have a lot of competitive drive. If I beat somebody, and they reacted negatively to me winning, then I would just feel guilty, not joyful. I hated feeling guilty for beating someone more than I hated losing.

And I wanted to play in little league. My first year of little league did not go very well. My lack of self-confidence led to fielding errors and striking out a lot. I rode the bench.

In my second year, something changed and I found my confidence. As the season progressed I became the team’s best player landing me in the role of shortstop and the number three hitter.

I was so excited for my third year and perhaps being one of the best players in the league. But. I wouldn’t be in Pittsburgh the following summer. That was the last time I would feel confident as an athlete.

That coincided with having to leave the biome, habitat and community where I belonged. My father was offered a job as the Dean of the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. We moved at the end of the 1972 just after my twelfth birthday on December 30^th.

The last event we attended before moving is my best claim to fame. I was a rabid Pittsburgh Steeler fan. The Steelers were terrible until the early 1970s. They made the playoffs for the first time in 1972.

The Steelers played the Oakland Raiders in the first playoff game. The steelers were losing with enough time for only one play. The quarterback Terry Bradshaw launched a pass to a wide receiver in the middle of the field that was tipped up in the air by all-star safety Jack Tatum. Franco Harris, the Steelers star running back, caught the ball and ran it into the end zone as time expired. They won!!!

The play remains one of the most famous plays in NFL history, known as the “Immaculate Reception.” I was one of 50,000 people who was there. Unfortunately, I saw the ball go up in the air and turned around and started kicking my chair while swearing. Then I heard everybody cheering and saw Franco Harris in the end zone.

There could have been no greater positive note to end my time in Pittsburgh.

But there were also harbingers that my life would change dramatically after we moved.

The Hartford Courant announced my dad’s hiring as dean in the paper. The news article prompted moving companies to call my parents and try and sell their services. My mom answered a call from a mover. As the man on the other end was about to hang up, he said

“By the way, what’s your husband’s first name?”

My mom responded,

“Morton”

The man responded,

“The newspaper forgot the “t.”

The news article included a headshot of my dad with his name underneath the photo. The name did not have the “t” in his first name. My dad, who was quite insecure about leaving the only place he had ever lived, was introduced to the Connecticut community as Moron Coleman.

My dad handled this extremely well externally claiming that the Hartford Courant had good sources. The rest of us in the family thought this was hysterical and still do to this day. It was a humorous harbinger that things might now work out so well in Connecticut.

Although this harbinger was funny, the other one was not.

After the movers took our stuff, we stayed at my Aunt Jean’s who lived about a mile away. Frisky was a very territorial dog and we knew she was going to have trouble moving. My Aunt Jean’s house had a gated white picket fence around the house. And we tried to make sure that gate stayed closed so that Frisky wouldn’t run away and try to find her way home.

Somebody left the gate open.

Frisky ran away. I never saw her again.

My parents learned in a few weeks after we settled in Connecticut that Frisky had made it back to Pocusset street, but she was beat up and missing an eye and had to be euthanized. I still cry thinking of her returning home after a terrible adventure, like Odysseus, and never got to experience the joy of running back into my arms in the place she belonged.

Even more hurtful and emotionally damaging was that my parents decided that I could not emotionally handle that news and did not tell me that until a few years later that Frisky was found and put to sleep. That was the only thing for which I could never really forgive them.

I held on to hope that Frisky would be found and join me in Connecticut. It was much more emotionally difficult hoping I would be reunited than knowing she had died. I never had a chance to grieve. I never had a chance to say goodbye.

More importantly, I needed her badly adjusting to my new world in Connecticut where I was the new kid who did not belong. Starting life in Connecticut was like going to a work site, opening your toolbox, only to find all of the tools are gone. I felt vulnerable and lost..

I had been excited to move to Connecticut. Moving sounded fun. I was too young and naïve to recognize what would be lost. I also had no inkling that I was leaving the only place I would ever feel like I just fit and belonged. The rest of my life would mostly feel like being a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.

Perhaps that made me crazy?