Mo (My First Crushes)

First week of the year feels like this, I almost forgot. After a full month of extraordinary indulgence, I crave ordinary things with a new fervor. (This week my husband and I have invented a little cheer: we look at each other and he tells me, “Carpe diem!” and I go, “Let’s do this!” and we laugh because it’s silly but it works. We’re pumped up for whatever IT is that we’re doing.) There are the obvious activities I fill my week with, but there are also hard-to-pinpoint, un-schedulable pieces of my life that make me feel its rhythm. I crave those too. One of them is the Mo’s ongoing tell-all of his past. I didn’t really realize how much I count on it (I thought it’s his thing, and I am just along for the ride), until suddenly I feel like I miss it, and I can’t wait for more of it.

So, here we are back with Mo on his adolescent adventures, picking up with 7th grade. Part of me wonders how far along he will take this – to his age now? I don’t know, and I kind of don’t want to ask. I want to be surprised. Wherever he’s taking this, I’m liking the ride.

By 7th grade some of our classmates were becoming attractive young ladies. Catholic School did not encourage leisure co-ed activities. Recess was mostly pent playing first ball, a form of baseball with a tennis ball and short bases with all the girls. Dreaming about slims in to the back of the classroom for kissing and kissing was part of every day. Nothing ever materialized.

In the fall I extended my good night prayer from a half minute to about half of an hour saying my Hail Mary to make the football team. When I receive probably the last blue and red sweat shirt, I was probably the happiest 4 ‘9 and 90 pounds kid in the U.S. of A.

When a girl was crying because her dog had died and she was told that pets will not go to heaven, I raised my hand and asked Sister R., if God could do anything, why couldn’t he allow some pets in heaven? We were kept after school until I raised my hand and said I believed that no animal were in heaven. The other boys and I wanted to go to the playground so I lied to the nuns. That was the first step in my journey out the Roman Catholic Church.

By this time I had read almost every book in our school library and was finding all the Sherlock Holmes books in the town library.

Sports kept me busy everyday and the radio next to my bed which was a couch in the little living room of our apartment in the day time kept me busy every night. It never occurred to me to do homework but my grades were excellent because I paid attention in class.