THE FOOTNOTES

First there was Jackie, then Rita, and, finally, Bobby. I am Bobby, and I was the baby. Six years separated Jackie from Bobby while Rita was four years older. The age differences dictated that our relationships would not be buddy-like. We simply lived in the same deprived circumstances.

One might expect, because of my standing in the hierarchy to find that I was a dilling. Not so. No dilling was our Bob. In fact there was some question as to his acceptance in the world in the first place, never mind a privileged one.

Just because I was cute as a button, smart as whip and so cuddly, it didn’t make me a dilling in that household.

What’s that, you ask? Never heard of a dilling? It’s what I should have been!

I guess I would characterize my early years as a time of loneliness. I was often alone in the house. Both parents worked and were gone all day. My siblings had their own interests which did not include me. My parents seemed to be out of the house after supper, too, as did Jackie and Rita. When I

was about 10 years old, or so, being alone in the house was especially stressful at night. Sometimes no one would be home with me

and I would be terrified of what was going to get me. The kitchen had 7 doors entering upon it, and as I lay on the kitchen couch observing each in turn, my

only defense lay in my watching each door, one to the next, so whatever lurked behind each closed door could not sneak up on me. The remnants of loneliness lingered into adulthood where I found the “empty nest” a real factor, and sometimes after a visitor to our home leaves, I experience a similar feeling.

Sometime around my Junior High School days, my mother moved out---and I didn’t blame her. Then I was really on my own.

My experience was not that of a pampered youngest child, as alluded to above. I learned if I wanted to sew on a button, for example, I had better do it myself. I learned to prepare food for myself, as well, and laid out my own wardrobe, such as it was , for the day. That kind of experience turned out to be a plus for me as I discovered a few years later when I went into the Navy, and was astounded to discover that lots of guys who no longer had mommy to look after them didn’t know much about taking care of themselves.

In learning to take care of myself, however, I learned not to depend on others. I learned to be cynical, and not to expect the best of people. If that sounds Freudian to you, it sounds that way to me, too. I found that if I assumed the worst of everybody, I was often right. I routinely sought ulterior motives in others, and when I expressed the possibilities, as I was wont to do, it was abrasive to those who took a more Pollyanna view of things. It wasn’t until my wife came along that I learned that maybe I was a trifle too judgmental, and maybe I had failings of my own. She’s been straightening me out for the last 59 years.

Summarizing my role as the youngest child in that family, I turn to the parlance of my New Britain contemporaries when I say, “It wasn’t no fun.”

# posted by Noonski @ 4:17 PM