Bleeding Perseverance - Episode 16

Autobiography Fridays

New Year’s Eve has always been one of my favorite holidays. Mainly for two reasons…

One, it marks the start of a new year. A new beginning. And two, I’ve always enjoyed fireworks and such.

Our neighbor across the street gave us some firecrackers, Chinese lanterns, and a few others. He’d light the firecrackers while holding them and then toss them into the air where they would explode. I thought I’d do the same thing.

The first few went off without a hitch. But then I lit one and held it for too long. It exploded just as I tossed it into the air, leaving my finger madly pulsating. I went into the house having learned my lesson. Of course I didn’t tell Mom because she would have banned me from ever playing with them again. We watched Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, as we had done every year since I could remember.

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We kinda grew up with cats. We had a couple on Airport Way, Cleo and Pearl. We had also tried keeping a dog at that time, a black lab we called Sandy, but she ended up running away.

There in our second house on Kauai we had a few cats. Mine was a black one I called Ninja. I was still fascinated by this mystical subject and wanted to learn more. In a magazine I saw another magazine that was available for order entitled, The Making of a Ninja. After begging Mom and earning the money we sent off for it. She claimed she really did get the money order and placed it in the envelope, but the magazine never came. Could her ‘bad luck’ with money have rubbed off on my order, or was there something she wasn’t telling me? Whatever the case was, I’d have to wait a few more years before learning about the art I seemed to be drawn to.

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It wasn’t just magazines I read. I really got into books that year too. The school had a contest where you had to read as many books as you could. I don’t remember what prizes were available or even if I placed, but it did help instill in me a life-long passion for the written word.

There were so many books I read that year, but the only title I can remember is How To Eat Fried Worms. The books I couldn’t get enough of were the Choose Your Own Adventure ones. Overall, becoming an avid reader not only helped offer a place to escape from my crappy environment, it also helped in developing my creative mind and shaped me into who I would later become.

To supplement our income Mom got a job at an Italian restaurant in Lihue. Supposedly it was owned by Sylvester Stallone’s Family. Being on the other side of the island, she had to find a used car.

Now that she was working she’d leave just as we’d get home from school, then arrive back home at around eleven or twelve o’clock at night. This meant I had to clean the house, bathe the kids, make them dinner and put them to bed. As well as getting my homework done. Although it sounds like a lot of responsibility for a twelve-year-old I actually didn’t mind it. The house was nice and clean and the kids were asleep by the time she’d get home every night. I enjoyed the leftover food she’d bring home, but more than that I enjoyed the peace in the house. With her new busy schedule she wasn’t such a ruckus anymore.

Unfortunately it didn’t last long. Like everything else, she found an excuse to quit and things were back to how they had been beforehand. Chaotic.