Synergy

The only time I ever tried to run away from home, I was on a boat. To Ireland.

I was in the eighth grade, just about the time you start to get too big for your family but are still too small (one hopes) to start your own. I was unhappily ensconced in what was said to be the largest junior high in the country at that time. The Traverse City Junior High gathered its 2500 victims from the couple of dozen elementary schools in the area and funneled them into the Traverse City High School, which, because of its large pool of students, was one of the best regarded schools in the state. In sports, anyway. But, really, what else was there to public education in Michigan? It was a giant shock going from my small, stable class of 30 sixth graders, almost all of whom had been with the same group of kids for their entire school career up to that point, and being thrown into a class with 750 other students. And not just other students, other seventh graders. Not that anybody has a particularly stellar time in junior high, but to have that many kids at that age all locked together just seems cruel beyond words. So, like millions of kids before and after me, I just kept my head down and tried not to draw too much attention to myself.

It was a difficult time. Not only was there the whole ongoing crisis (my English teacher would scold me for that – the nature of a crisis is that it is not ongoing) of puberty and hormones and self-esteem and unfamiliarity in my own body and, gulp, girls to deal with, but things at home weren’t particularly rosy, either. At least, not for me.

My mom had just started seeing Frank, the last of her boyfriends (I hope) and the man she would later marry. Unfortunately, there was the slight inconvenience of him already being married and having a kid (and another on the way). In a small, insular community like Interlochen, that kind of secret doesn’t stay secret for long, but they did their best, and they absolutely forbade me from saying anything about it to anybody. Wanting to keep the peace, I did as I was told and played dumb about it, although they certainly didn’t make it easy for me. Frank moved into an apartment “in town” (Traverse City, where the Junior High was located, was about 20 miles from Interlochen) during the separation, and my mom would frequently pick me up from school and take us to his apartment for the night. Of course, she never bothered to bring a change of clothes for me, or anything for me to do while they were trysting, and it was always awkward the next day at school when my friends asked where I was the night before and people made fun of the fact that I wore the same clothes to school two days in a row. But she didn’t care. She was far too wrapped up in her dangerous liaison to pay much attention to her geeky 13-year-old and how this was all affecting him. Later it occurred to me how I could’ve used “the secret” as leverage against them, but I was far too nice to do anything like that. Then, anyway.

At any rate, spring was in the air, and my mom had been planning a big trip for me and her and Oma, her mother, to take during her three week break from Interlochen. The trip had been in the planning and saving stage for quite a while, so she went through with it, even though I suspect she’d’ve rather stayed at home with Frank.

This is the kind of adventure we’d occasionally have. The three of us – the family matriarch, her only child, and her only child’s only child – would go to Europe together, or drive through the original 13 colonies for an historic Bicentennial orgy of patriotism. In retrospect, it is amazing to me that she would even consider such a venture – traveling in tight quarters with her mother and her son for a couple of weeks at a time – especially since money was tight and we’d invariably spend most of it just getting to and from our ultimate destination and then have to scrimp and squeeze while we were actually there. There was one trip to Europe when I was nine or so in which we ate the peanuts and Tang that Oma had thoughtfully packed on a daily basis in order to stretch our food dollar. I haven’t had a sip of the space-age orange drink since then and I hope I never shall.

For this particular adventure, we were bound for Britain – two weeks in London and a week in Ireland. I was what must’ve been irritatingly blasé about it (when my mom triumphantly announced the trip to me, I believe my response was “I’ve already been to Europe”), but I was at least glad we were going somewhere where the language wasn’t going to be (much of) an issue.

It wasn’t a particularly pleasant trip for me, and I can’t pretend it was much better for my mom and Oma. The biggest problem, really, was my age. When we had gone to Europe before, we’d invariably spend the day doing things I didn’t want to do (the Louvre? Spare me), but I was too young to strike out on my own. This time, I was thirteen, and my folks were irritating me just by existing. To be trapped in a hotel room with them for three weeks was almost unbearable – especially since there were always only two beds and nobody really wanted to sleep with anybody else. In addition, Mom and Oma wanted to spend every day wandering museums and going to high tea and every evening going to some mind-numbingly boring play in an attempt to cram as much “culture” into the trip as possible (“when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun”).

I was going out of my skin. We’d be walking down the street and I’d just want to go and then I’d realize I was alone and that the two of them had stopped to peer into the window of the Lace Emporium (“lacers to HRH since 642”). So, I’d stomp back and try to get them back on track. After much prodding and whining, and many pained sighs of disgust, we’d finally get where we were heading and it would turn out to be the Tate Gallery or something equally thrilling. We’d spend the day walking and standing, and then go to some achingly boring drama in the evening, and I’d spend the entire performance desperately trying to stay awake, my head lolling and bobbing around.

And as little fun as I was having, I’m sure that’s just how much fun I was to be around. As far as I was concerned, I was a full-grown man and more than capable of handling myself and I just wanted to be cut loose and explore the city on my own. Understandably, Mom was a little concerned about her 13-year-old country bumpkin of a son wandering the streets of one of the world’s largest and most formidable cities alone, but, to her credit, she did bite her lip and let me go out a couple of times by myself. Once I slipped out during the intermission of some play to stretch my legs and I was approached by a middle-aged man and asked if I wanted 10 pounds. I couldn’t quite cut through his accent, so I asked him to repeat what he had said. He looked about nervously, cleared his throat, and asked again if I wanted 10 pounds. “Ten pounds of what?” I asked, which scared him off. Walking back to the theatre, it dawned on me what had just happened, and I told my mom as I was settling back in my seat. She looked over at me worriedly, then said, “I hope you held out for 20.”

There was one accidental respite in all that forced culture. In purchasing theatre tickets, my mom had inadvertently walked into the wrong building (oh, you know how it is in the West End, all those theatres piled up on top of each other), and, instead of emerging with seats for D.H. Lawrence Slowly Contemplates His Virginity, she ended up with tickets for Shag the Vicar! or some such bedroom farce. It was a breath of raunchy air in a carefully pruned garden of flowers, and I drank it in deeply, savoring the stench.