A Piece of Lint in Outer Space

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ISBN: 9781098388225

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: I am Discovering that I am not that Cute.

Chapter 2: Mr. Day and Mr. Night

Chapter 3: My Mom the Psychic.

Chapter 4: The Surrogate Family Upstairs.

Chapter 5: I Almost Went to Woodstock

Chapter 6: I may or may not have played soccer with Bob Marley?

Chapter 7: Ahoy there Gilligan

Chapter 8: My Father the Philosopher

Chapter 9: I Am Not My Father! I Am His Son!

Chapter 10: I Am Being Stalked by a Crazy Woman

Chapter: 11 Friendly My Ass!

Chapter 12: This Is the Last Time My Son!

Chapter 13: This Is Not the Dream I had Hoped For!

Chapter 14: And Now the Pain Cometh!

Chapter 15: Caught in the Oncoming Tide.

Chapter 16: Tolerance

Chapter 17: I Am the Neighborhood Menace. Part A.

Chapter 18: I Am the Neighborhood Menace. Part B.

Chapter 19: Judgment!

Chapter: 20 Even in Jail!

Chapter: 21 Settling into the New Jail.

Chapter: 22 Ambivalence

Chapter: 24 Unwelcomed Home.

Chapter: 25 Making Ends Meet.

Chapter: 26 The Accuser Becomes the Accused.

Chapter: 27 Finding My Niche!

Chapter: 28 Facing My Fears.

Chapter: 29 I Have Friends and I Have Family.

Chapter: 30 Clearing My Name.

Saints of the New Dawn

Biography

Chapter 1: I am Discovering that I am not that Cute.

I do not want to be thought of as someone that kicked in doors to get ahead in life, but rather someone who eased through the windows God opened for me!

My first memory as a child is vague, but I remember it takes place at a swimming pool. Surrounded by a large group of people, music playing, I could hear my mother calling for me! Micky, Micky, where are you? Micky Aaron Wasserman where are you?

From what I was told this happened when I was three years old, on a visit to some event for my dad’s side of the family, a wedding, I think? We only got together with my dad’s side of the family on special occasions.

My grandfather took us to a Jewish Country club he belonged to in Cleveland to escape the summer heat. While we were there, he had me put on a show for a bunch of his friends. I sang along and danced to ‘Chubby Checker"! My mother was frightened when she realized I was gone, but oddly there was no mention of how she lost track of me. Incidentally later that year I had to have an emergency appendectomy. My mom blamed that damn dance, insisting I twisted myself into a burst appendix.

When my mother saw the gathered crowd, she thought at first, I had drowned. As she muscled her way through the on lookers I was still twisting away spurred on by their encouragement. In her telling of this story, she fainted. Several family members dispute her version.

My paternal grandfather was a tall man fond of throwing me in the air and catching me, much to my delight. Whenever I was with him, he always liked to show me off to people! These activities of course were exciting to me, as anything that made me the center of attention was and sometimes still is.

My father loved telling me stories about my grandfather and his family since we lived in Pittsburgh and most of his side of the family lived in Cleveland. Since we only got to see his side of the family as I mentioned on those special occasions it always brought out a nostalgic side of my dad who was usually not given to looking back at things. He was more forward thinking for the most part.

One of the stories my father he did like to tell was how my Grandfather Herman Wasserman and his brother Samuel who were just boys of about 11 and 12, escaped from Lithuania around 1883 when there was civil unrest in the Russian occupied territories. At this time, many Jewish homes were destroyed, and young men were taken away to work camps by Russian soldiers after the assassination death of Tsar Alexander II, but my grandfather and his brother were able to escape.

When they first escaped, they were often assisted by others. Several Russian families hid them under their floorboards, in cellars, or attics. Once they were almost caught hiding under livestock and straw in the back of a sympathetic family’s wagon. My grandfather and his brother traveled Europe for a decade as a result of his travels my grandfather was said to be able to speak 13 different languages. Herman Wasserman was the only grandparent I ever knew. He died at 92 when I was only five years old.

My mother would often remind me of occasions when I embarrassed her, including my grandfather’s funeral. A Jewish funeral is interesting! All the mirrors are covered in the house while the family sits shiva, a week-long mourning period in Judaism for first-degree relatives. I of course did not understand why it is called sitting shiva since so many people were walking around.

This event was taking place at my Uncle Sidney and Aunt Lois’s house in Shaker Heights. My Aunt Lois was a flamboyant woman with a raspy voice and a real flare for decorating. As luck would have it, she happened to be re-painting a bedroom that very week. My older cousins thought showing me the room being painted would be fun.

My cousins were not only happy to show me the room, but also several cans of different colored paint, rollers and brushes. They encouraged me to help the family out by painting some of the walls. Their enthusiasm ran especially high since they had learned I was an excellent artist. I of course was more than happy to pitch in and help.

Plain walls painted one color bored me, so I began making designs utilizing every color available. I made circles and stars with light blue and splashed some eggshell white here and there. I did not think about taking off my shirt or jacket. Oh well the price of good artwork is sacrifice.

My poor mother was speechless when I came downstairs, my beautiful funeral outfit covered in paint to announce that I had created a masterpiece upstairs. My Aunt Lois was livid. My dad laughed his ass off like he always did! This is one of those intricate details that will have some bearing on many future events in my life.

It was at about this same time that I started school. I did not attend pre-school or kindergarten.

I went right into 1st grade in September of that year even though I was not yet 6 years old because my birthday is in the middle of October.

Before I get into my adventures in public elementary school it is only fair to say that my parents contemplated putting me in a Catholic school. I suppose they believed that since my older brother Tommy went to a parochial school and turned out alright that would in turn apply to me?

Up until that time my brother baby sat me for my parents since they both worked. During this time Tommy had taken careful stock of my mischievous character and conveyed to our mom and dad that the penguins would kill me. I can only conclude that the penguins he was speaking of were the Nuns at St. Augustine’s, the school he had attended.

So, on the advice of my sibling who was 17-year-old at the time I was placed in public school. I’m not sure why I was not placed in pre-school or kindergarten? I believe it would have helped. If anyone is familiar with first grade in public elementary school, you will note that this is where the basic learning and socialization skills that were demonstrated in pre-school and kindergarten are now expected to be implemented. I of course not having been introduced to such Ideology found myself as one in a foreign land might feel. I was perplexed and confused! I often felt completely isolated and alone like a piece of lint in outer space!

I would ask myself why doesn’t the teacher see how cute I am like my dad who laughs at everything I do? I was also bullied a lot by my classmates. I was very clumsy and since I was a little younger than most of them, I was often smaller, and I was gullible. I did not understand sarcasm or get it when I was being set up and had a trick being played on me. I was missing all the crucial social skills that would have been taught to me in pre-school or kindergarten. When someone acted as though they liked me before arriving in this foreign land, I believed they did.

One of the practices applied in elementary school was the restroom break. It went like this. The teacher would have all the students line up in two lines, one for girls and the other for boys. We were then expected in an orderly fashion to march down the hall to the rest area and two at a time go into our respective lavatories, do our business, and then come right out get in line and quietly wait to be led back to our classroom. This of course was too difficult for me to do without some antics, or disruption on my part.

After several attempts this is how it went for me and my class. Instead of the normal procedure that the teacher desperately wanted me to follow she would have me go down to the lavatory first while the other children waited in line. This really did not help to make me popular in a good way with my peers. Like I said I was simply supposed to walk down do my business and come right back and then sit in a chair by the door while she escorted the others down as usual.

Well, one day I decided that my teacher who was miserable all the time just needed some cheering up. Instead of just coming right back I would make a game out of it with her and just wait to see how long it would take her to come get me. It was not that long before she came down the hall and when she got right to the lavatory I jumped out and she fell over me and landed smack on her ass!

To my surprise she was not amused at my little joke at all. My parents were called to the school and my mother of course was not amused either. While we were in the Principals office, my mom just sat there shaking her head back and forth as the incident was told to her. Even my father was not laughing and stood there just shaking his head in time with my mom. I’m sure that my father at least was laughing on the inside!

I was at once taken to see a child psychologist to have me tested because my teacher was sure that I was developmentally challenged. He figured out that I was not developmentally challenged but on the contrary bright but easily bored and not at all prepared for 1st grade. So, he recommended that my parents should hold me back a year which they did and hired a tutor to work with me.

I started 1st grade again the following September and I did a little better but not much. I am now convinced that in my case culture as much as nurture had a lot to do with my slow development and ability to assimilate. I am not saying that I was not nurtured. It was more about how I was nurtured.

My father laughed at a lot of my antics because he was 47 when I was born and his only child. He also came from a very large family of 6 brothers and 5 sisters with him in the middle which meant not receiving a lot of personal attention from his parents because there was only so much to go around.

My mother’s side of the family was quite different from my fathers of course. Even though they came from different cultures in retrospect there were also a lot of similarities. For example, my mother’s family was quite large as well with 7 brothers and 6 sisters with my mom being the youngest! My father’s Jewish relatives all seemed to talk loudly with many gestures and a lot of hand movement, but so did my mother’s Italian side.

They both believed in the One true God but of course my mother’s side believed in the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost and that Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection as our only means of salvation. My father’s side did not believe in salvation through Christ and were certain they were not present when the crucifixion happened.

Both families valued tradition and seemed to be very spiritual on occasions. Like my mother who my brother and I called the occasional Catholic because when I was growing up, she only attended church on occasions like Christmas and Easter.

There also seemed to be a lot of contradictions and confusions. For example, I was baptized Jewish. It is called a mikvah. I was also circumcised. This is called a ‘Brit-Melah done by a Mohel". However, I was more than anything exposed to Catholicism growing up, but I never had a Holy Communion, or Confirmation. I did not have a bar mitzvah either because I never went to synagogue except for the occasional wedding or funeral in Ohio.

By that time, I reached age 13 most of my father’s relatives had died so I never knew many of my cousins from his side of the family. I find it all very strange because people hold on to things and they say