jimmy doody

i was born in Sioux City, my sister Janie, in Tuscon and Lisa, in San Francisco. dad made a lotta moves. we didn't actually live in San Francisco, but across the bay in Oakland. when i tell someone about my past however, i always say San Francisco cuz it seems, i dunno, cooler. i sort of remember how it was, even though i was only 5. it was a slender, three story walkup with narrow stairs and a dark interior. i went to a school where you're supposed to learn immersion french. the teacher, when i arrived my first day, was cleaning piano keys with a cloth. one note at a time. boong...boong......BOONG. she never looked up. she frightened me, but i sweated it out in my 5 year old way, Very Quietly. after school i'd walk home with a classmate and we'd throw rocks through the windows of an abandoned house, set back from the road with an overgrown front lawn, a broken gate and rusted, discarded bikes, a nightmare landscape. a rock would shatter glass, hit something weirdly soft and a howl curled up out of the depths, scaring the piss out of us. we'd run away shrieking and laughing, high on fear. i made my first best friends out there. Jimmy and Judy ('Jimmy Doody' as we pronounced them.) they didn't go to my school but we'd meet up in the afternoon and invent stuff to do. one day we pulled turds out of the toilet, wrapped them in tin foil and Christmas paper and tried selling them door to door to repulsed neighbors. our thinking: there was So Much of it around maybe a fortune could be made. (children do not always have all the answers.) back then my dad had a pale green DeSoto with heavy steel doors that made a sure sound when you shoved them shut. it had that unmistakable brand new smell inside, like leather and gasoline. we took her for a spin across the Oakland Bridge, which had a road surface made of metal gauze. you could see the bay rippling underneath. Janie sat shotgun, i was in the middle when suddenly her door swung open with her small, chubby hand on the latch and half her body stretched away from the seat, one foot swinging like a doll's. i could see the blink blinking of the bridge girders flickering underneath. i grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her in. dad was yelling. as i picture it, as it tell it, i saved her life, but i probably made the whole thing up. a month later i swallowed a peach pit and couldn't 'go' for days. they took me to the emergency room. the doctor snapped on a rubber glove, smeared it with goo and pulled the doody out of my ass. Jimmy Doody. i trace a lot of who i am back to that moment.